


The Pleasantness of Employment

by keire_ke, Rohnoc



Series: The Pleasantness of Employment [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:29:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohnoc/pseuds/Rohnoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of two lively toddlers must be in want of a babysitter. This truth is so fixed in Erik's mind that when his children mysteriously turn up fed and entertained, he doesn't question where the care comes from, so long as it is continuous, or at least he doesn't question it until the caretaker turns out to be his handsome neighbour. Sadly, his attempts at romancing said neighbour are undermined by—no, never mind, it's easier to list things that don't undermine his romancing attempts, and those are the weather and meteor showers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was illustrated by the fantastic Rohnoc! Please head over to [her Tumblr](http://rohnoc.tumblr.com/post/41819582151/art-masterpost-for-keire-kes-the-pleasantness-of) or the art post here on AO3 (the next story in the series) to tell her she is awesome. ^______^ Thank you so much, Roh!

There were three useful things that Magda graciously left to Erik in the divorce, and those were:  
1\. His balls,  
2\. The ancient sewing machine she had rescued from her great-grandmother's house fifty years ago, before she turned to witchcraft and sucking out souls to prolong her youth,  
3\. The ability to itemise.

All that and the pair of kids, obviously, but since Erik had yet to find a practical use for humans with twenty-eight months of life experience and no sewing skills, other than when the inevitable nuclear famine strikes, he itemised them on other lists.

Currently they were topping the “things I cannot locate” list. This was a concern. The flat was not so big Erik couldn't see most of it from where he was standing (knee-deep in fabric samples and sketches, with a handful of pins stuck in places which would become extremely uncomfortable, should he sit), so the fact he couldn’t see or hear them, when he factored in the fact that they were tiny as holy fuck and unable to operate machinery more complicated than spoons, such as doorknobs, was extremely worrying. They had no knack whatsoever for being invisible, their evolutionary advantage was creativity rather than adaptation to the surroundings. Sometimes Erik worried he would step on one of his children by mistake, which wouldn't be an accomplishment, as Pietro excelled at moving across the room and into harm's way too quickly to be noticed and Wanda exuded the mystical magnetism that drew heavy objects from above to fall onto her hard little head.

Erik shook his head and went back to looking for the bundles of joy, rueing the day he taught the little bastards to walk.

Hm… they weren't in the living room or the bedroom, or their bedroom… The bathroom offered little cover, so that left the kitchen. Erik approached the kitchen readying himself for the sight of mutilated corpses of his children, with dozens of knives stuck in their little bodies. No, that wasn’t feasible; the last time he'd seen the knives, and that was today, they were still in the box and the box was on the kitchen counter. His kids, for reasons known only to aeons of random trait manifestation, weren't interested in things they could find with no effort whatsoever, choosing instead the things a) high up, b) down a well, c) on the other side of a freeway.

Not that Erik had room to talk, what with balancing a divorce, two kids and a fucking Fashion Week next month with enough time to spare to drink a beer.

He was really getting anxious by now, when the familiar twittering couldn't be heard from any of the rooms he semi-owned. His heart was climbing up his throat as he stepped out into the corridor, confirming his worst fears – the doorknob was sticky from the outside, which meant one, or both, of his kids were outside the flat.

“Wanda! Pietro!” he called, on the verge of panic, offering up a prayer to the vengeful gods of moving in, promising a ritual sacrifice for the safe return of his kids before he had to embarrass himself and call the police to fish their little corpses from the dumpster, where they have fallen after taking a nosedive through the trash-chute. No, unlikely. The chute was more complicated than doorknobs by a factor of seven or so. No way had they managed the chute, unless Wanda got the brilliant idea to stand on Pietro's shoulders, developed an intimate understanding of latches and peeked down, and had Pietro somehow defy gravity and fly after her.

Just then the door opposite his opened and out stepped a vision tailored to Erik's lovely masturbatory fantasies, give or take a few inches of height and take a few clothes. “Hello,” the pleasant fantasy said, infringing on Erik's family time with its pretty eyes and red mouth. “I heard yelling.”

“In a minute. Sorry, I live right here, just moved in – can't talk, looking for my kids,” Erik said peeking into the chute, just in case.

“Erik,” the fantasy said, flavouring the words with faint incredulity.

“Did you happen to look outside just now? They couldn't have been out for long. They are small, barely walking.” Under the carpet might be pushing it, but any minute now Erik would start ripping floorboards, expecting to see little fingernails and locks of hair wedged between the cracks in the wood.

“Erik!” the fantasy said, a little more forcefully than Erik would have liked for a fantasy that didn't involve a police uniform, handcuffs and an interrogation table. “They are fed, changed and sleeping on my couch. Wanda said you haven't done any shopping, so I left some food for you, too.”

Erik gaped. Fortunately, he fancied himself an intelligent, adaptable man, so he shook himself and immediately came forward, holding out his hands to shake. “Ah. Terribly sorry, I didn't catch your name. I'm Erik Lehnsherr. Thanks for looking after the kids.”

He went through the whole spiel as he usually did, suave and winsome, so it was inexplicable that by the time he got to the thankyous and the smoulders the neighbour was giving him a stare equivalent to a drug test. “Right,” he said. “You realise we've been living door to door for over a month now.”

Was it a month already? Fuck. No wonder he was off his game. Before Magda and _House of M_ Erik would have probably fucked this guy by now, bearing in mind that before Magda he didn't have two missing children. Or two present children. “Yes, of course. I'm sorry if I come across as antisocial, I have an unbelievable amount of work to do.”

A merry twinkle in the neighbour's eyes registered as a prelude to a setup. Too bad Erik was too high-strung to register anything other than “pretty blue”. “So I'm noticing.”

“You said my kids are at your place?” Erik asked, looking at the floor to confirm there are no child-sized blood smears leading in or out of the flat. There was nothing. They were probably fine. Unless they were in bags. That would be bad. “I'm so sorry for the trouble. I'll take them home immediately.”

The neighbour bit a smile and took a step back, freeing the doorway and letting Erik inside.

The layout was not different from the one in Erik’s flat, which was the only thing saving Erik from kissing the carpet, as the hallway and the living room were dark, and only a solitary LED lamp, hanging over a typewriter, made the furniture visible. Erik had the shadowy form of the couch in his sight, and as promised, two little mounds were nestled together, with the sloping of the blankets indicating they were sleeping head to head. He stopped three steps away and cried with relief when he perceived motion, the kind that indicated breathing and not, say, completely at random, stacked body parts succumbing to gravity.

He turned to thank the impromptu sitter and a whole day of not eating plus the sudden spinning resulted in him tripping and so, being a proper gentleman, he grabbed onto the nearest stationary object to avoid falling and making a fool of himself. Naturally, the object turned out to be the neighbour, the stationary nature of whom was an illusion, and Erik was enough of a gentleman to flip gravity the bird and fall on top of the guy. This in itself wouldn't be bad – the man had firm abs, smelled of garlic (Erik loved garlic), had absurdly blue eyes, even in this lousy lighting – but the kids were right there, sleeping like the little spawns of, well, Erik, they were, biding their time until they could interrupt.

“Well, I don't know what you have been taught in Sunday school,” Mr Blue-Eyes said, “but we're not all promiscuous. I, for instance, demand at least a dinner that I didn't make before putting out.”

“I'm Jewish,” Erik said, absently pushing himself to his feet and offering a belated hand, two seconds too late, as the neighbour was already up. “Wait, what?”

He earned a very blue eyeroll. “Didn't I put the homosexual disclaimer on the door? Darn meddling kids.”

Oh, this neighbourhood just got interesting. First things first, however – Erik went for the couch and checked the pulse on his babies. Excellent, just right for sleeping. It was nearly seven o'clock, he knew were his children were; they were both breathing and had a pulse. As a bonus his pretty, pretty neighbour was gay, a fresh supply of Erik had just been delivered to the local market, which meant sex! The day could be therefore jotted down in history as a success, or at least a pit stop on the way to success.

The only snag was that the neighbour, whose pants Erik planned to invade as soon as an opportunity arose, heh, pun, was watching him with more amusement than lust.

“I hope they weren't too noisy?” Erik ventured, as they retreated into the kitchen, knowing full well that Wanda, the quieter of the two, could warp reality and burst eardrums with her shrieks.

“No more noisy than you could expect from two two-year-olds. I'm proud to report they ate their carrots and their broccoli. I felt justified in awarding them a scoop of ice-cream, each.”

Erik glared. “Did you drug my children?”

“No, why?”

“Pietro hates broccoli. He shoves them under his potatoes.” Hate was not enough of a word there. Abhor, maybe. Disdain? If broccoli was all that was available to eat, Pietro would be found with his face on the plate, having spelt “send me food” with the uneaten greens.

“Yes, you said. I didn't give him potatoes for that reason. He was confused enough to eat the greens.”

“I said that?” When the fuck did they speak? Erik was sure he'd remember talking to this guy, if only because he'd have tucked in the mental picture into his favourite memories folder.

“Well, yes.” The neighbour offered up a smile which, in a text, would be represented with a colon and a pointy bracket. “Erik – I've been babysitting them for three weeks now.”

“What?” No, seriously, what the motherfucking what?

“If you went through your mail, you would have found the grocery bills I have left for you. As per instruction.” The lovely fantasy apparently was now Erik's babysitter. This was slightly less arousing than Erik preferred his masturbatory fantasies to be, bearing in mind that he was parenting two terrors from hell on speed and thus whatever he did in the privacy of a locked room had better be quick, or he might emerge to find them pinned to the ceiling with his scissors and non-adhesive measuring tape, curse their creative hearts. “I'm Charles Xavier,” the fantasy added. “I have absolutely no credentials to be babysitting your lovely spawn, other than geographical convenience.” He began fiddling with an array of dishes on the stove and a plate he magicked out of a cupboard.

“Why, are you a paedophile?” Erik said, with the reflexes and inborn tact that somehow got him laid all this time.

“Goodness, no. Children are so sexually uninspiring.”

“A serial killer then? A pathologist with the tendency to bring his work home? A Kardashian?”

“Now, I won't be insulted in my own house. A Kardashian, honestly,” Charles said. He was smiling, though what was it about mashed potatoes with carrots that amused him so, Erik didn't know. “Broccoli or coleslaw?”

“You're right, preserved body parts are probably cleaner than the stuff they stick into their mouths on a regular basis. You're plenty qualified. Can I have both?” Erik asked hopefully, as #1 his stomach and his brain were in the middle of a nasty breakup, and just now the stomach was in a hospital and needed urgent counselling from his next of kin, thus was leaving messages on the brain's automatic secretary, which the brain had ignored for quite some time, and only now managed to switch the device on, #2 the plate of steaming food that Charles was preparing seemed to be destined for Erik’s consumption, #3 Erik loved food, not that anyone would be able to tell with his size and weight.

“I will not have you badmouthing my cooking,” Charles said, putting the plate on the table and returning to the cabinets in search of utensils.

Erik had, in the meantime, picked up the messages the stomach had left and started picking on the delightfully pink salmon with his fingers.

“Here you go.” Along with a fork there was now a steaming saucer of something yellow, something that smelled of butter and lemon and garlic. Erik had a legitimate foodgasm right here, in his neighbour's kitchen. “Wait, didn't you just say you're Jewish? Does the rule about milk apply to fish as well?”

Erik, having his mouth stuffed full with the potatoes-mashed-with-carrots-and-also-broccoli-as-of-now grabbed at the swiftly departing saucer with one hand and a fork, making embarrassing noises, until the delicious mess was ready to go down his oesophagus. “Give me that!”

“I really think we should have discussed this earlier, if it's going to be an issue—“

“I will curse you as only reverent Jews know how, if you don't give me the buttery goodness!”

“When you put it that way…”

Erik got the saucer and with unholy glee splashed half of its contents on the salmon right away. Charles watched him shovel the food into his mouth with something not unlike disgust on his face.

“I'm going out on a limb here and assuming you enjoy my cooking,” he said when the plate was as spotless as Erik could make it with a fork and his fingers (yeah, in the great battle between food versus manners, food won every single time, not that Erik was hard to please in the kitchen department).

“It's delicious.” Erik let his head fall back and sighed. “I may have skipped breakfast this morning. And possibly supper the night before. I think I had dinner yesterday, which is weird, because I remember meatloaf and I don't think I would ever buy meatloaf.”

“That would have been me, as well. I thought you didn't notice me there.”

Erik blinked at the neighbour, at the spatter of freckles across his nose and the earnest blue of his gaze, marred by an insidious spark of mischief. Missing that should be a capital crime, he thought. But Your Honour, his brain argued in his defence, I really was busy. The bloody dress was not cooperating, and what can a man do, when sequins refuse to cooperate?

“Anyway – the meatloaf had pork in it, which I am sorry about, but I genuinely had no idea, you didn't mention it.”

“I'm surprised I mentioned I have kids when we met,” Erik said and it was true – if they'd met anywhere but his home he would have swept the rugrat thing under the carpet, for a chance of, as it were, a go at the guy's carpet. Fuck if it wasn't Terrible Pun Tuesday, again. Erik thought he'd gotten rid of those a long time ago.

“You didn't. I found them salivating in my living room, which I suppose was my own fault, for leaving the door unlocked. I hasten to add I normally don't lure strange children to my lair with cooking, but I was baking gingerbread and I am exceptionally good at gingerbread.” He oozed pride as he said it and Erik had no difficulty imagining him cackling as he lured unsuspecting neighbours to his boudoir to have his wicked way with them, and holy fuck, sign me up for that.

“Huh,” Erik said instead. He had been out of it, for the past few weeks, but to this degree? “I don't mind pork. Or bacon. I love bacon.” He paused. “Why are you cooking for me, again?”

“To be completely honest, I have no idea.” Charles grabbed the plate Erik had been eating off and dropped it in the sink. “I can tell you are busy and I have an important deadline looming, so having a legitimate reason to procrastinate seemed like a thing to do. You offered to foot my grocery bills, by the way, plus a bottle of decent scotch now and then.”

Erik had a memory in his mind, or rather a series of memories: a vague notion of meatloaf, before that a stew, and a handful of other dishes he inhaled between stitches and whose presence he never questioned and, most of all, blessed silence, accompanied with the peace of mind that suggested his babies were looked after. They were now overshadowed by the delicious zest of lemony-buttery-garlicky-salmon and frankly it didn't seem fair. “It doesn't seem fair,” he said firmly. “Three weeks? Really?”

“Are you on drugs?” Charles asked, suspicious all of sudden.

“You have no idea how much I'm regretting the fact that I am not, but my stitches are dreadfully cubistic when I'm on drugs and we're going for the _art nouvaeu_ look, so Moira would have my head.” Charles seemed less than amused, so Erik quickly amended, “Not that I have been on drugs lately. Or a lot, ever. Look, it was just that one time; I was nineteen and a designer told me I was too fat for his suits. Long story short, I punched him in the face and avoided flour and powdered sugar for three years after that.”

Charles still didn't look impressed, though by the way he reached out and grasped Erik's wrist, turning it over, Erik assumed he was on a fast track to good relations. “Too fat?” Charles asked, cocking his head, rubbing his thumb against a protruding bone.

“I was a model.” He could see the inevitable _Zoolander_ reference heading his way. After seven hundred and fifty-seven times you could just tell: it showed in the crook of the lip, the corner of the mouth, so it was better to dive straight into it. “I like to think I mastered Magnum, and I never saved any official lives, but as I recall I did nearly kill a paparazzo once, with a look. Good times.”

“I take it he deserved it.”

“He was cycling down the pavement with techno music blaring in his headphones. You tell me if he deserved the broken bones.” Good thing he'd come to his senses later – Erik would have killed (kill in this context meaning psychologically damage) a lot more people, if he didn't have Azazel at his side to snip, cut and refasten, and occasionally release the hounds of hell.

“So he did.” Charles stood, giving Erik a very soothing view of his backside as he ambled to the far corner of the kitchen. The jeans he wore could do with a better cut, preferably something that slung low and clung to his hips and thighs (Erik wouldn't mind having a go at clinging _there_ , himself), though he wasn't complaining about the completely non-premeditated tears in the fabric. “Tea?”

“A cup of adrenaline with extra caffeine would be lovely.” Erik covered a yawn with a hand. “Sorry. I meant I would love a coffee, I got allocated four hours of sleep tonight, but they aren't until later.”

“You should take better care of yourself,” Charles said, flicking on something shaped like a promise of espresso. “You look awful.”

“Hey – I was a model, you know.”

“I can see why they fired you.” The blessed machine sputtered and caffeine began drifting throughout the kitchen, tickling Erik's nose with its meandering hands, the fucking tease, and Charles just stood there, watching life drip into the cup one pressured drop at a time. “Ginger beards don't go well with bags under your eyes. You look like a vagrant.”

“Mostly they fired me because I punched them in the face. Which they deserved.” The cup of caffeine landed in front of him, impossibly tiny and impossibly alluring. “And I'll have you know the hobo look is due a major comeback.”

“Anyone adopting it is deserving of being picked up for it. Sugar? Or maybe fresh ginger?”

“Both.” Erik managed to hold off pouncing until he heaped two giant spoonfuls of sugar into the dainty cup and Charles squeezed a fat chunk of ginger with the garlic press. With any luck this would keep him up until midnight, and he'd get the mock-up done. Or, he'd fall asleep on his pincushion within the following hour and wake up when the children had gnawed his fingers to the bone.

“Do you want to take them to bed?” Charles asked, indicating the living room.

“Depends. Do you want them? They come cheap.”

“My fridge is already full, thank you, and I don't foresee any famines.” Charles had poured himself a glass of scotch and brushed its bottom it against the rim of Erik's coffee cup, producing a soft clink. “I'll keep the offer in mind, though.”

Erik grinned and licked out the last of the sugar, directing his gaze to the wall as he did so, to preserve the illusions of civility. “I better go,” he said, getting to his feet. “They won't stay asleep forever.”

Charles followed him into the living room and silently scooped up Wanda in his arms, neatly tucked in a blanket Erik recalled as one he had bought back before he remembered heterosexuality wasn't an option. That lent credibility to the theory that Charles and he had an actual arrangement, as opposed to the former luring the kids to his lair on a whim. Plus, he’d just got fed, so even if Charles did partake in luring, it wasn't like the three of them came out of the deal robbed, he thought as he bent to pick Pietro up. The boy had kicked half the blanket up and the other half he pushed down, so now it covered his waist and something round, fuzzy and stripy, which he was gripping like a crippled octopus. Erik didn't remember paying for the monstrosity, but he had been married to a witch from planet witchcraft, so there was that. Charles raised a brow at him and so Erik ignored his misgivings about the furry thing and picked Pietro up, blanket, monster and all. Tucking them in was the work of a moment, as it swiftly turned out they were swaddled up in pony onesies and had their maws smelling like mint toothpaste.

“You have been drugging my kids,” Erik said, with awe and approval in his voice. “Can I have a tonne of whatever it is you've given them?”

“I resent the accusation. They respond to logic and bribery, like any pair of kids.”

“Logic and bribery.”

“I am good at logic and bribery,” Charles said simply, and grinned, stretching his lovely red mouth all the way across his white teeth.

Erik's _To Do_ list reassembled in the face of new evidence and now read  
Fashion Week,  
Charles,  
World domination,  
Pick up milk.

“Oh, is that what you've been working on?” Charles pushed the door to Erik's study open, from where a dim light was shining a path across the carpet, revealing an absolute mess of fabric, needles, pins, tapes and lace. Swathes of lace. Erik was all about lace this season. “Is that a cape?”

“What's wrong with capes?” Erik said, halfway defensive, but then Charles was bending over to examine the – in Erik's professional opinion – perfect cross-stitched hemline, and most of thought sailed away, to graze on greener pastures.

“Nothing at all. Not something I would wear, obviously.”

“I'd think not, it wouldn't fit you.” Not that Erik would discourage cross-dressing attempts, but this was neither the time nor the dress.

“Are you calling me fat?”

“No, wait—“ Erik began, but Charles' eyebrows would have given Azazel a run for his money in the Prince of Hell department, and that was saying something, when your competition was a guy who encouraged people to refer to him as Azazel. “Yes, absolutely. I think you should give me all your food from now on. You may nourish yourself with crackers and broken dreams and with any look you will be down to an acceptable weight this decade or so.”

Charles smothered a snicker and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “If you keep eating like that, I just might.” He gave the neckline of the dress a nudge, so that the generous ruffle fell sideways, obscuring the cleavage – which was an interesting angle to follow there, a counterpoint to the asymmetry in the skirt – and turned back to Erik. “Well, it was nice meeting you, for the fifth time. Let's hope it sticks.”

“I'm sorry about that,” Erik said. Charles laughed. “And I'm foisting my kids on you.”

“Don't worry about it. I wouldn't offer if I didn't want to help.”

“I got it under control. Hopefully I will remember who I meet from now on.”

“I hope so.” Charles offered a coy smile, one that Erik chose to interpret as promising (and a little kinky), and went right out the door, leaving Erik staring at the mannequin and the vivid pink muslin. The Fashion Week was four weeks away. Erik was, while not ahead with his work, then at least up to date, the schedule had been fixed and Moira wasn't breathing down severed appendages yet, so he could afford a moment's distraction now and then.

No sooner had he had that thought the he began spitting and knocking on anything remotely resembling wood, his own ginger-coated cranium included. The Gods of Irony were on his case, bad, because how else would one explain the fact that it took a gay man one foray into heterosexuality to get laden with twins and a wife. All the years of spurning the advances of fellow models, actresses and seamstresses had come back with a vengeance. Karma didn't even bother knocking; karma arrived on a golden calf smacking its rear with a pointy stick, yelling something in a proto-Indo-European language. No, Erik was taking no chances. He would play it cool, he would play it smooth and by the book: the distractions would evolve organically, he would take advantage of the moment and not plan, because plans were to the Gods of Irony what honey-coated tender flesh was to fire ants.

Erik was sick of fire ants.


	2. Chapter 2

Naturally it followed that when he showed up in the studio in morning, after dropping the twins off at the Sleep-Near Daycare, the fire ants descended on his sequinned picnic basket, snapping their jaws of fiery doom over Erik’s most vulnerable parts, although he didn’t find out about the honey-glazed trap until the day lulled him into a sense of security and good humour. Moira had the good sense to send Azazel down, to help him unload the mock-ups and the metric tonne of paper he doodled over in a 3 a.m. fit of creativity. He was unveiling his creation to the despairing moans of his minions (fuck them, seriously, ruffles were in and capes would make a comeback if he had to don one and crusade for it), when Moira coughed up a lung in an effort to gain his attention.

“I thought you'd quit smoking,” he said before he looked up, but as soon as he had he had a coughing fit himself.

Emma fucking Frost was gazing at him with cold amusement, holding a slim cigarette in her perfect hand. Out of respect for the workplace regulations, the cigarette was unlit, but the way she was holding it suggested that self-immolation of tobacco was an option and would be taken for granted.

“Erik, Miss Frost would like to commission a _haute couture_ gown from us.” Moira was holding a cigarette as well, one of Frost's, shedding tobacco all over the place. Her expression, once Erik separated the elation (because Frost! Here!) and panic (fucking hell damn it, she wants it now!), suggested the commission wasn't for a Christmas pageant.

“We are four weeks away from the Fashion Week. It's out of question,” Erik said. “Come back in a month.” At least a month. Better still, come back when the babies could feed themselves and have left for college, because if Erik had to design another gown, then consult it with the client, then hand-stitch it to perfection, he was going to kill someone.

“I like him,” Frost said. “He has balls. Are those your designs?” The slim cigarette indicated the mock-ups Angel was currently arranging on the mannequins, to better inspire the minions whom Erik trusted not one bit.

Erik didn't like where this was going. “Yes,” he said warily.

“They show promise. I need the gown in three weeks.”

It was all Erik could do, not to laugh in her face. Then Moira started making frantic gestures, the kind that require far more energy than can be dispersed in fractions of a second, so when Frost looked back over her shoulder Moira was caught with her hands in the air and a feral snarl on her face, the one Erik liked most, which she immediately smoothed into a grin. Not soon enough for Frost to notice, sadly, but then again it’s not that easy to go from furious ferret to hospitable host in a space of a microsecond.

“Oh, by all means, darling. Let the boy have an opinion, it's not like it would have been the first time in ten years I show up to a movie premiere in a dress made by anyone other than Sebastian Shaw,” Frost said, tapping the unlit cigarette with a finger.

… this was why Erik should have made Azazel buy every rag on the rack, read it top to bottom and prepared a report. So that he wouldn’t be surprised like this. “We have no time,” he said slowly. “I have four weeks and we are nowhere near wrapping up the collection—“

“Excuse me.” Moira's fingers curled into the bone of his arm, as she dragged him out of the sewing room and into their supply closet. “Are you, excuse me, fucking insane, Lehnsherr? This is Emma fucking Frost. In our dress, attending a movie premiere, in a dress with your name stitched on it!”

“It could be something no one will ever see,” Erik protested, though the sound was feeble. Emma Frost didn't do small and unimportant. The only places she graced with her shining presence had better be prepared to receive the honour. And that woman was in their tiny studio right now, demanding a _haute couture_ gown. “Fuck.”

“Exactly. Erik – we have exactly no choice. You do this, we have it made. Fuck Fashion Week, we have enough ideas and manpower to pull it off without you, but this one, we need you on this one, and it needs to be perfect. Hell, this goes right, we can piss all over Fashion Week.”

“This is my show! You can't just take it away!”

“I'm not trying to take it away. We can cut down on the number of outfits; we have enough material to work with already.” Moira preened for a moment because they had enough solely because she clobbered Erik into turning in sketches as often as every day, instead of when inspiration struck, which wasn’t all that often with the babies in the picture. “We will follow your designs, every piece will await your approval, but for the love of all things small and furry, Erik, you will cease sleeping, you will cease breathing if you must, and you will make that dress and it will be utter magnificent perfection of a dress. Unless you find, in your comprehensive business-savvy, a way to circumvent the giant golden goose that went and landed in our laps spewing golden eggs out of its mouth and shitting diamonds all over the place!”

“Geese don't have mouths,” Erik said, sinking onto what had been a crate in its previous life, but now served as storage for fine silks. “Fuck.”

“Three weeks of your life and we will have dressed Emma Frost to the movie premiere of the season.” Moira showed a bundle of black lace into Erik's open mouth and continued, “It's the world premiere of _Captain America_ in New York. I asked. Everyone will be there. Every last person to walk the red carpet in the past ten years and more paparazzi than there are Changs in China.”

The objections were many: A: Erik had babies. B: Two babies. C: He didn't have the time, as Fashion Week was a big enough obstacle. D: He actually planned to get laid this month. E: A gown for Emma Frost would rob him of sleep, weight, sanity, braincells and sight.

On the pro list, there was this, glorious in it diamond-laden whiteness: he would be making the gown that Emma Frost wore to a movie premiere. And also, now that he thought about it, a jewel-encrusted, fifty feet tall royal “fuck you” to Sebastian Shaw.

“I'm going to die,” Erik said, fishing the remnants of lace out of his teeth. “I'm going to die, my children will be tragic orphans, tragically laden down with a tragic death in the family, they will end up penniless on the streets, begging for dog food because the flat value will go down after I die and rot in there and it will be your fault. They will eat my putrefying corpse and die of poisoning and become cannibals and then zombies and the civilisation as we know it will end.”

“Your children can't die, beg for dog food and become zombies at the same time. I'm also relatively sure you will not be responsible for the fall of civilisation. In any case, you children will live on knowing you died heroically while making a dress that will in all likelihood be worn once and then sold at an auction fifty years from now,” Moira told him, opening the door to the closet. “They will be very proud.”

“Explain to me again, why did I get custody of you, and not Magda?”

“Because she decided to go into management and cosmetics, thus becoming my competition, and you foolishly stuck to fashion. Good job.”

Erik growled something vague, but a smile danced on the corner of his mouth. Moira had been in talks for the job Magda got, and withdrew once they told her about the divorce. She'd stayed with Erik to get _House of M_ off the ground, and if he hadn't learned the hard way why women were bad for him, he would have married her on the spot. “If you decide to slit your wrists be a dear and do it after you finish, and don't bleed on the dress.”

“I hate you. I will curse you in ancient Jewish languages and sew those curses into the gown.”

“As long as those curses don't blind cameras, do what you will,” Moira said and marched out.

“Ancient Jewish curses, I like the way you think,” Frost said. She was sitting in a chair that faced the closet across a narrow walking space and thus had been privy to the conversation. Erik cast a look around the studio. It was so tiny everybody had been privy to that conversation, although his minions had the good sense to keep their heads down and pretend they hadn’t. “I take it I can expect a gown?”

“When are you available for fitting?” Erik asked, waving a lacy white flag.

“Oh, darling. Anytime you want me in the following week, call an hour earlier, two if at all possible, and I'll be there. I have to take a short trip to LA the week after that, but it will be three days at most.”

A small whoosh of air escaped Erik's lungs. Small miracles were on his side. “Give me two days to whip up a semblance of order here and come up with something to begin with. I will send you the croquis via Azazel. We will work out a schedule from there.” He fixed Frost with a hard look. “I will have no trouble at all pushing you off the stairs if you cancel appointments and make me look bad.”

“I don't think it's your looks that concern us both at this time, wouldn't you say?” Frost got up, brushed her golden hair off her shoulder and reached into the snowy purse for a business card. It was pure white, with a faint translucent flower motif, most reminiscent of a windowpane in Finland, and contained only her name and a discreet set of numbers. “My personal mobile phone. I will expect the courier the day after tomorrow. Don't think I have no idea what I'm foisting on you – I want to see completed ideas, that I like, before two p.m. on Thursday, otherwise you can go back to your catwalk collection. I will be here at four, to discuss them. Do value my time – I do.”

Erik watched her stiletto heels depart, spearing through the mess of discarded bits of thread, sequins, fabric and everything that littered the floor of a fashion studio with not enough manpower to spare for cleaning. He caught Moira's eye over the holy silence that fell over their workspace, mindful of the awed faces of his minions.

“Okay,” he told himself. The following month would require blood sacrifice, but those came cheap in a city full of students. “Listen up. It is very likely I will kill someone in the next few weeks, and if you aren't careful, it could be you. I just brought you a bucket full of ideas; we'll go through those in a minute. Angel, I'm making you responsible for doing the mock-ups. Delegate, hire your mother, I don't give a flying fuck. I want them done, and I want them all done by the end of the week. I'll be working from home—“ holy motherfucking teletubby, he would have to collar the children and keep them in a cage, but the studio was too small to accommodate a private workroom, and that way he would gain a couple hours a day, hours he wouldn't spend commuting, “—and I will only tolerate important calls. If your house burns down, call your mother, I don't care. If the studio burns down and you left everything inside, you had better suffer from third degree burns as an excuse, else I will kill you. Questions?”

“Yeah, you will be dealing out methamphetamine when?” Angel asked, tapping her naked thigh with an enormous pair of scissors. “You're going to die, making a _couture_ gown in three weeks from scratch, and we're gonna die from exposure to you.”

“Yes, probably. I'm prepared to make that sacrifice.” Erik shrugged. “Cease whatever you're doing.” What followed was six hours of parsing through his doodles and sketches and working them out on sheaths of paper, until Angel was nodding in tune with Erik's curses, marking down places to sew and pin. “You got all that?” Erik asked around three, capping the marker and throwing it across the room.

“Like I said, we are all going to die.” Angel stretched out her arms, flexed her biceps and the tattoos across her arms and shoulders fluttered like they were actual appendages. “We will die suffocating on glitter and silk, so I guess we die in luxury. I can deal with that.”

Janos nodded. “Did you want this in sequins or glittering embroidery?”

“I don't know yet. Do the mock-ups, I'll tell you then.”

“You'll be coming in, though?”

“You're assuming I will be alive and won't have murdered my babies.”

“We will visit you in jail,” Azazel said. “Mostly to point and laugh.”

“Charming. Go fuck yourself.”

“Do I still get paid?”

“If you impress me, why not.”

“No fucking on company time,” Moira said, descending on the meeting like an avenging angel of reasonable retribution. “Erik, go home. Work on the designs. The rest of you, work, or I am revoking your bathroom breaks.”

“I don't think that's a good plan.”

“Buckets will be provided, to be emptied after clocking out. Questions?”

“Yes, one. We clock in and out now?”

“You clock in now, clock out after Fashion Week, so I strongly suggest you keep those privileges,” Moira said, folding her arms. “Get to work.”

Erik stayed until it was time to pick his kids up from the daycare and then went home, disregarding usual protocol and simply carrying one under each arm as his thoughts set sail. Emma Frost was famous for many things, chief of them being the complete casual disregard of the laws of physics. The waves might refract however they pleased; she would wear no less than the full spectrum, condensed into a single beam. That limited his colour choices, but on the other hand, it meant one less reason to argue with the client, which meant less time spent on designing and more on sewing. Trouble with the latter was, Erik had made a total of two _haute couture_ dresses on his own, and each had taken him close to two months. He could do it in three weeks, he told himself hitching Wanda up higher on his hip and wishing she'd stop whining, but he would be cutting it close. Extremely close. Shaving off electrons close.

“Erik,” said a kind voice somewhere behind his back. “You babies are not comfortable.”

Erik turned and discovered Charles, who was looking at him in mild disapproval. He looked down and found Pietro and Wanda, each hanging on one of his hips with their clothes bundled up under their armpits, staring up at him with teary reproach. Oh.

Fortunately, Charles really was a magician: he had both the toddlers cuddling him, the round, fuzzy monstrosity and small cookies on the couch in under a minute, tears forgotten. Erik leaned heavily against the doorframe of his workroom, watching them feed each other cookies until he slumped down the wall, hiding his face in his hands.

“Hey,” Charles said. Erik looked up and found the children yapping at each other merrily and Charles sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him. “You really look bad.”

“Have you ever heard of Emma Frost?”

“She's someone important, isn't she? I'm not sure what she does.”

Strange that there was still such ignorance in the world, Erik thought moodily. To not know Emma Frost… Erik wondered at the marvellous prospect. “I have absolutely no idea what she does, but she has been on the cover of everything, and her word had brought down fashion houses before.”

“Uh oh,” Charles said, radiating sympathy.

“She commissioned a gown for a movie premiere.”

The sympathy winked out, and instead Charles lit up with delight. “That's fantastic! I assume that's fantastic? That means publicity for you?”

“It's a nightmare of epic proportions,” Erik told him in no uncertain terms. “She wants _haute couture_ , which is horrible at the best of times, and she wants it in three weeks, which might as well be tomorrow!”

“I'm not sure I understand the problem.”

Erik sighed and very deliberated hit his head against the wooden frame. “In short, it means hand-stitched; a one of a kind gown, perfectly tailored to the client. It means a million stitches per inch and me stabbing out my eyes with needles. In France there is a fashion mafia that would make me into shoes for daring to call a gown _haute couture_ without a licence.”

“Ah,” Charles said, and light, orange glow of sympathy was back. “But it is good news, isn't it? Emma Frost is very high profile, so it has to be good that she wants to work with you.”

“If I make this dress we are going to be a hit on the Fashion Week if we show up with tea cosies and dishtowels. We're doing fine, financially, for a small house, but we need it to go well.” He hit the wall with his head again, marvelling at the black vastness of nothing that bloomed whenever he closed his eyes. “And I'm out of ideas.”

“I can pick up the children from the daycare for you, if you'd like, and watch them until the deadline.” Charles was smiling again. The smile was warm and cherry-red, and Erik would have loved it a lot more if there was an idea stapled to it.

“You'd do that?”

“I'm going to need a written chit, or whatever passes for official permission these days, but yes, absolutely.”

“Don't you work?” Erik asked, suddenly suspicious, because it occurred to him that groceries weren't much of an income, even if scotch was involved, and this was an expensive flat block.

“I'm a writer.”

“I've never heard of you.”

“I write young adult lit, I presume that's not your cup of tea, yet.” As it happened, they were sitting at the door to Erik's workroom, where _Go the Fuck to Sleep_ was tucked between the folds of fabric and the sewing machine, which was as close to literature as Erik had been in the past year. “But I'm taking up your time. My phone number is on your door; drop me a text if you want the children home tomorrow.”

“Yes—I mean, if that's fine with you. I'll make sure they know to expect you at the daycare.” Fuck it, he thought. This was too important and Charles _offered_. He'd think about repaying him later, when he had time and free brain cells.

He was conscious enough that evening to come up with dinner on his own, and Wanda reminded him to invite Charles over, by pouting and saying “Chars” with a wobble of her lower lip when he began the serving procedures. Charles showed up with a box of cookies and two pints of ice-cream, so the babies went to bed with bellies and cheeks round and pink with happiness. Erik kissed them goodnight and wondered how he could possibly inflict them on Magda for two weeks. She was busy with her own company and she'd take his begging as a sign that full custody was beyond his strength and, while she wouldn't try to take them away (she was no idiot, other than that brief moment of insanity when she married him), she would sic her parents on his ass, and that wouldn't end well. He rested his forehead against the teddy bear Wanda kept on her pillow, inhaling the sweet aroma of baby powder and peach shampoo. “Goodnight babies,” he whispered, touching Pietro's cheek, and flicked the lights off, leaving the Hello Kitty nightlight to watch over them.

His mobile phone was on the table, taunting him with its glossy grey finish and the magenta heart Moira stuck on it, to differentiate from her own. Did he dare call Magda?

What could possibly be the harm, other than a set of nosy parents with no boundaries and a grudge against him?

He dialled the number nonetheless.

“I'm at work, what do you want?” Magda asked, underlining the question with rapid fire typing.

“I need you to take the kids for a week, maybe two.”

“No way.”

“I'm serious – I'm out of options here, I can't work with them here without stabbing something.”

Magda sighed. “You never could work without stabbing something. What's the dire emergency?”

“Only the fucking Fashion Week.”

“That's not for another four weeks.”

“I have three weeks for an _haute couture_ gown for Emma Frost.”

The typing ceased and for a moment so did breathing. “You lucky, lucky bastard,” Magda said, spitting venom straight into his ear. “Anyway, I can't, sorry. Not right now.”

Erik whined into the phone.

“If you'd let me finish for once,” Magda continued, “then maybe we’d still be married. I'm taking two weeks off in ten days. I can take the kids then and foist them on my parents after that, for the Fashion Week.” Erik had only now realised that she'd attend the Fashion Week – unlike the rest of them, her job was quietest right before, leaving her free to take the time off. If only his mother was here, she'd love to take on the little terrors for an extended period of time, but Edie was busy discovering her roots and last time he'd heard she was in a kibbutz in Israel, digging for oranges in the shadows of ancient ruins. She wasn't due back until Hanukah.

That left him with ten days during which he would have however many meetings with Frost, while dying to stab her with his entire pincushion at once, and he'd have to impose on Charles to save his poor babies' lives. “It's a deal. Don't tell your parents, because I will kill them if they show up.”

“I'm not stupid.” Magda's exhale whooshed through the phone, letting Erik know she was brushing her thick auburn hair off her shoulder. It had been nice, having her nearby, he recalled, back when they were still making a valiant effort at denying reality, solely because he loved her hair and the way it fell over her shoulder, but come now, who wouldn’t? Magda had hair that was not so much long as it was enormous, filling the space around her head and shoulders with a mass of gravity-defying curls. It looked heavy like it was wrought of solid metal but the slightest move would send the locks tumbling over the skin. He'd gotten some excellent designs out of that texture. “Thus far I got seventeen messages from my father, informing me that he told me so. I let him near you, I won't be able to go near the phone again.”

“Edie sends her love,” he said, smug in the superiority of having a parent worth talking to.

“Sweetie, Edie complains you don't call and only answer in grunts when she calls you. Also, she is in Haifa for the week, she's staying in a hotel with a delightful internet café downstairs. It wouldn't kill you to write her an email with pictures of the kids.” Magda adjusted her hair again. “I have to go. Don't kill my children in the meantime.”

“They're my children.”

“Who squeezed them both out of their vagina?”

“I'm not having that argument again.”

“I'm just saying,” Magda said triumphantly. “Tell them I said hi.”

“It wouldn't kill you to call them, either, you know.”

“They have you for kissing booboos. I'll let you know when I'll come to pick them up.”

He slept that night with the vague realisation that this may be the last few hours of sleep of his life, certainly for the following month. Excellent. He woke up at five, startling himself onto his feet, as in the dreamland Moira had been chasing him with an enormous pair of scissors and he was flinging pebbles at her, in a vain attempt at holding her off, while Emma Frost sat on a gilded throne and laughed. The faint suggestion of sun crept through the drawn curtains, giving the room a science-fiction look. There should have been an idea there, Erik thought numbly. Something. An outline, a shape of the dress, a visual reference, for crying out loud!

He rolled out of bed, scratched everything that itched and went for a run. The kids slept like the dead until seven, which gave him time enough for a quick jog around the block and an espresso in one of the coffee shops, with the baby monitor clipped to his belt just in case. On his way back he paused by the newsstand, drawn by Emma Frost's flawless face, peering at him ironically from the cover of _Vogue_ he’d already read at work. He rolled his eyes at her, paid for _The Times_ and turned to head back, when a book cover caught his eye. The illustration was of blue scales and wires, and far in the distance, in a spot of light around which the scales coiled, stood a girl, holding up a lantern and looking towards the viewer. The book was called _The Scarlett Witch_ , and the name typed underneath was C. Francis Xavier. Erik went through the pockets of his shorts, coming up with a fiver and a few coins he intended to spend on water, but needs be, he shoved the money at the vendor and walked away turning the book over in his hands.

Some three minutes later he jogged back for the forgotten _Times_ , which the vendor gave him with a smirk.


	3. Chapter 3

One long, hot shower later he dropped a ream of paper on the table in the living room and stared at it, silently begging for the pencil to pick itself up and start doodling on its own. Sadly, the inspiration wasn't forthcoming, which he discovered an hour later, as he woke from a doze to an empty page and a crying child in the next room.

That part of the morning he handled on autopilot. Pietro needed to be out of his nappy first, else he would deafen them all with screams, while Wando bore the indignity of pants filled with waste with a teary tragedy written large on her tiny face, which was heart wrenching, but Erik found it easier to avert his eyes than to block his ears. Once the kids were clean, they had to be fed, cleaned again, and then driven to the daycare. That part also went without a hitch. It was only when he was getting into his car to get back to the house and tear the hair from his head in despair that he remembered he was supposed to impress upon Tweedle-dark and Tweedle-blond that he wanted his kids picked up by a neighbour he knew for a total of fifteen minutes, and by god his kids had better be handed over to said neighbour without a fuss.

“Forgotten something?” Tweedle-blond asked, as if he didn't have a yipping toddler on his shoulder, thankfully not Erik's own. He was by far the second weirdest babysitter Erik had ever met, what with being taller than seemed reasonable, muscled like a Greek god and oozing warm, golden-brown aura, with zigzagging bolts of energy. He looked like a man who should be up to his elbows in beer and sweat, not milk and nappies.

“Sort of. My neighbour will be picking Wanda and Pietro up. His name is Charles Xavier. He has my blessings to do so. He's about this tall,” Erik indicated the whereabouts of his own shoulder, exaggerating only a little, “so don't mistake him for one of yours. Blue eyes, brown haired, pale, freckled. Looks like a pleasant bloke.”

Tweedle-dark approached, looking for all the world like he planned to filet him where he stood. To him went the title of the weirdest babysitter Erik had ever encountered, what with his general pointiness and feline nature. Do cats eat their young? Erik wouldn't have been surprised if this guy did.

“Neighbour?” Tweedle-dark asked, looking Erik up and down, managing somehow to make the implicit threat more explicit with a bright pink rattle, which hung from one of his long fingers. Erik had thought there was something slithery about him from the get go, but he had connected with both Wanda and Pietro with little prompting, so he let it slide. The daycare came highly recommended and thus far the Tweedles managed to deliver the babies into Erik's arms everyday well-rested and with smiles on their faces.

“Problem, Lawrence?” Erik straightened and folded his arms.

Lawrence hissed at the mention of his given name, which was the only reason Erik bothered to remember it in the first place. “What is so important that you can't be bothered to pick up your own children?”

“You'll have to excuse him,” Tweedle-blond said, patting his brother's shoulder. “I'm sure it's an emergency.”

Erik had to wince. “It's a long-term emergency, I'm afraid. He might be picking them up more often.”

Tweedle-dark's expression grew stormy. “Children at this age require routine and positive parental attention. Handing them off to strangers when they have only started to accommodate in a new environment is irresponsible.”

“Yes, they also require frequent feeding, which is why I need to hold on to a job.”

A quirk of an eyebrow let Erik know what Tweedle-dark thought of that excuse. “Has the neighbour been properly screened?”

Erik didn't even know if Charles was English, no matter what the accent suggested. “He's fine. He lives in the flat across from mine. I will know the minute they are home.”

“We will, of course, call you when he leaves with your kids,” Tweedle-blond said brightly, tickling the child collar he was wearing, to the delight of said collar, which dug its fingers into his golden hair.

“If we let him leave with your kids,” Tweedle-dark said, implying strongly that he had a basement with secret passages and if Charles didn't pass muster, he would never be seen or heard from again, other than as a wailing voice in someone's ventilation. Erik approved of Tweedle-dark, on the basis that his commitment to keeping his children safe was heartening, but his overall countenance was grating as fuck.

“Wanda and Pietro know him, he had been babysitting for almost a month now.”

That went well, he thought when Lawrence departed, muttering about background checks and no respect for sensible precautions.

“Charles a published author, if it helps any,” Erik told Tweedle-blond. “He should be easy to find online. You have my number if something happens.”

“You might want to warn this neighbour.” Tweedle-blond handed Erik a folded glossy with printed directions to the daycare and basic information, on which someone helpfully added in small, black letters, “beware of Loki”. The inscription was accompanied by an arrow pointing to a circle around the man's head in the group photo of the Tweedletwins being smothered by a group of toddlers.

“Yeah,” Erik said slowly. “I will.”

This was the excuse he used for ambling up to Charles' door and ringing the doorbell. He was about to ring again, when he heard the lock turn and, having aimed his gaze at where he thought Charles' collarbones would be, found himself staring at a pair of very disappointing pink nipples, crowning a pair of pale breasts. Why were there naked breasts in Charles’ flat? Erik also noted that the owner was less stringent than most of his models about pubic hair (in context this meant she had some), before his gaze travelled up to her face and the honey-brown eyes, which were watching him curiously. Her cheeks were faintly pink, as though she made the conscious decision to answer the door in the buff, but a hind part of her brain, even though it had been evicted from the driver's seat, was still blinking.

“I like your shirt,” she said brightly. “Neat!”

“Thank you. I made it myself.” He knew people in the business who did most, if not all, their own clothing. He couldn’t be arsed most of the time, but he happened to like pink shirts, and no store managed to get his combination of slim and pink just right.

“No kidding!” The woman stepped back from the door, letting him cross into a strange, parallel universe. “Charles will be around in a minute, he’s impossible in the mornings. Do you want coffee?”

“Can you operate the espresso Ferrari Charles has in the kitchen?”

“Sure. Espresso?”

“With two sugars, if you don't mind.”

“No problem.” She turned and went into the kitchen, swaying her hips as she walked. Pretty, Erik thought, admiring the line of her pale body against the Prussian blue of the kitchen.

Meanwhile, a door in the flat opened and Charles emerged, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with fists. He was wearing a dreadful ideological T-shirt and loose pants, and he focussed on Erik with visible difficulty. “Good morning. Did Raven let you in?”

“She did. She's making me a coffee.”

“Can I have one too?” Charles asked loudly, covering his mouth. “With milk, please.”

“On it!” Raven called back, which was followed by the low hum of the espresso machine.

“I'm not all the brilliant in the mornings,” Charles confessed, yawning again. “Raven fortunately is. She saved my hide more than once when I slept through the alarm clock when we were children.”

“You don't look related.” Erik toyed with the daycare leaflet, trying not to sound too hopeful. He did hear Charles saying he was gay, he was reasonably sure of that, had in fact based his shower experience this morning on that very certainty, but the breasts were confusing the picture now.

“Oh, we are somewhat related. Distantly. I don't really know. Step-siblings is the moniker most often employed, but there’s some blood there.” Charles yawned and Erik exhaled in relief. Operation: Shag the Author was still on. Postponed, but on.

Raven walked in at that moment, still naked, carrying two cups of coffee. “There you go, two sugars,” she told Erik, pushing the cup his way.

Erik took the cup and looked at Charles, who looked at Raven, blinked, shrieked, turned pink and brought a hand up to shield his eyes. “Raven, for god's sake! Put some clothes on!” he stammered.

“He doesn't seem to mind,” Raven said, grinning.

“He's a man!”

“I'm comfortable around naked women,” Erik said taking a sip of his delicious coffee. “Occupational hazard – I'm a fashion designer.”

Raven flopped into a chair, crossing her legs but otherwise making no move to cover herself. “I'm practicing for a role – I'm an actress – we start shooting in a couple of months and I get to spend the first five or so minutes on screen buck-naked, which means loads of time naked on the set.”

“But why are you naked now?” Charles whined, still hiding his eyes. “Please, do it for me. Clothes!”

“God, you're a prude.” Raven rolled her eyes so that Erik could see, but rose and retrieved a bathrobe. “All good now, Charlie, scary breasts went away.”

“Raven!”

“He still shrieks like a little girl whenever I walk in on him in the shower, which happens, because he doesn’t lock the door. It's unbelievable,” Raven confided, leaning into Erik. “And he's the guy who spent a whole weekend getaway with a boyfriend without opening his suitcase, which I know because he returned in the same clothes he left in.”

Erik grinned, making a mental note to gather all the pink he found in his workshop and send it to _House of M_ , with a doodle of something short and vaguely French-maid-like. It could be called Charles and it would be absolutely adorable. It would need cerulean for counterpoint, and a cherry-red lace finish, like a line of kisses down the hem. They should have some cherry-red lace leftover from the last show, and it would only take a strip, anyway.

“Hey, earth to handsome.” Raven waved a hand in front of his face. “You spaced out. Wanna share?”

“I had an idea for a dress,” Erik said. “It involved a lot of pink and possibly cerulean.”

“Sounds… vivid.” Charles took a sip of his coffee, visibly coming awake with each mouthful. “Is that the dress for Emma Frost?”

Erik imagined Emma in pink, blue and red lace, and wanted to shoot himself before she sunk her manicured claws into his supple flesh for suggesting it. “Good luck getting her to wear anything that's not white,” he said with a snort.

“Wow, hey, stop the horses, boy-oh.” Raven leaned forward and the bathrobe parted exposing her collarbones and the sternum nearly to the belt. “Emma Frost? As in _Emma Frost_ Emma Frost?”

“Are there any other Emma Frosts available for confusion?”

“You're making a dress for Emma Frost?”

“She has to dress somewhere.”

“Sebastian Shaw does all her wardrobe. Always has, ever since she was his model.” Raven put down her cup and stared at Erik, looking more eager for news than any paparazzo had ever had. “I heard a rumour they had a falling out, but I didn't take it seriously.” Her gaze was so hungry she was nearly devouring Erik with her gaze, tearing off bits of his flesh one by one. “You are a designer? Are you any good?”

“Evidently.”

“I have been looking for something to wear to the _Captain America_ premiere.”

“Fuck right off,” Erik said, in a fit of earnest panic. “I've my hands full with this one gown, and I'm going to be cutting it close enough as it is.”

Raven's face was a study of puzzlement. “What, you don't have anything on the rack? I really wanted something which flatters my thighs.”

“Did you try your ass?”

“I thought about bodypaint, but Charlie would have a fit and then die of embarrassment.”

“Hey!”

“I won't argue with that.” Erik gave Raven a measuring look. “Were you in anything anybody might have seen?”

Raven stared. “See, there goes my self-esteem. I just got over being called too fat for _Hunger Games_ and now this.”

_The Hunger Games_ rang a tiny tin bell in Erik's memory. “That was you?”

“It really was her,” Charles said, glowing with fraternal pride. “She was brilliant.”

“You thought I was brilliant when I was Briar Rose in school, still in primary, with the hideous paper crown dabbed with glitter that you made. It was dreadful.”

“I was right, wasn't I? You made a killing.” Charles huffed loftily, taking a dainty sip. “That crown was hideous though, crafts were never my forte.”

“Or mine. There was a reason you made the crown and not me.”

Erik was about to mention the Play-doh that he could see from where he was sitting, and the imprints of what he was certain were his children's fingerprints, but as it happened the Play-doh stood on a shelf right next to a collection of clocks. Fuck. He needed to get to work.

“Charles,” he started, fishing for the leaflet in his pocket, “you have been stupid enough to offer to pick up the kids from the daycare. Are you still willing?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Charles beamed at him, completely uncaring that he was putting Erik's career in jeopardy by looking utterly fuckable. “Do they know?”

Erik had to think about it. “I haven't told the kids,” he said. “Load them in the trunk if they protest and drive them here. I can spare a minute for comforting.”

“I rather think people might object to that.”

“I warned the Tweedles.” Erik handed over the glossy leaflet. “They're probably googling you, so be prepared to answer some questions.”

“Loki?” Charles asked, turning the paper over in his hands. “'Sleep-near'? You have got to be pulling my leg.” His grin got wider. “That is so clever! A little unsavoury, when you think about it too hard, but otherwise brilliant.” He went on to ramble about the interior décor and Erik was thoroughly lost.

“Obscure literary reference,” Raven whispered in Erik's direction. “Ignore it, and it will go away, otherwise he'll keep blabbering for another hour.” A little louder she added, “Charles, don't you have a deadline? Not that I mean to interfere in your newfound babysitting career, but deadlines are important.”

“No worries, I'll be fine. Babies sleep at night.”

“You need to stop staying up all night. It ruins your complexion.”

“Oh, but I had the most brilliant idea last night!” Charles dropped his cup and sat up straight, inching to the edge of his seat. “It turns out the entire dream sequence has actually happened. It’s fantastic! I simply had to type it all out, and it turned out magnificent, and long. It took me nearly twenty pages to hammer it out and I'm still not done.”

“What happened?” Raven asked, and Erik got up from his seat.

“I'd better go – I will make it up to you,” he told Charles. “I swear I will. Thank you.”

“It's no problem.” Charles was looking up at him, bright-eyed and with a tail in a state of definite bushiness, though the context suggested it didn't signify readiness to face the day, but rather a strong desire to crawl back into bed and purr with contentment while the covers closed over his head. In fact, Erik was willing to bet things were heading in that direction and if he didn’t have to run…

He left, pursued by a hot stare on his back, and dove into his workroom right away, else he wouldn’t and that would be bad. He pulled out a sheet of paper and doodled the Charles, first: it would bother him until he did it and it was adorable. Sexy, too, because no way in fuck anything Erik Lehnsherr touched wouldn't be sexier than the Mr Smith going down on Mr Ocean, but mostly it was a simple bodice that flared out from the waist and ended just above the knee, with the fabric bundled up over one thigh uncovering a shimmering organdie. He went through his box of pencils before he settled on an approximate of cerulean.

He was certain Janos would get cavities out of making this dress.

The chair screaked when he pushed back and started rocking, folding his arms behind his head. God, this place was a right mess. On the bright side, the bolt of pink he knew he had stashed somewhere out of sight was peaking up at him from the shelf nearest to the floor. Erik picked it up and unrolled half a yard. Yes, that would do. It was supple enough to fold nicely and stiff enough to hold the shape. Excellent. Did he have any cerulean organdie around? It could be useful. A five-minute rummage through the closet revealed a yard of the fabric, not enough for anything ambitious, but good to tie something off. Interesting, Erik thought, playing with the material. It wasn't unpleasant to touch, unlike most other organdie samples he had stowed somewhere.

Speaking of samples, he ought to have a box somewhere in here. Moira usually let him take the boxes home, in case inspiration struck in the night and he absolutely couldn't proceed without a shred of printed silk between his fingertips (which happened with depressing frequency). He spied it sitting on the top shelf, managed to pull it down onto his head, and set it down, plopping to the floor with a sigh. He pulled out the first scrapbook, running his fingers down the soft felt pinned to the cover. It was mauve, not a colour he should get hung up on right now, but something to consider for the future. Mauve and magenta, maybe?

The hell happened to his pincushion, while he was looking for stuff?

Five hours later he had his workroom dusted, vacuumed, polished and had organised the fabrics by texture and then colour. He had the pincushion on the table, right by the box of coloured pencils, and the lonely sketch of the pink dress. It was nearly three p.m. The babies would be heading home and he would be swamped with little critters.

As if on cue, the phone rang and Erik picked it up, dreading the news. “Hello, this is the Sleep-near daycare. Do you still want your children to go home with Mr Xavier?” Erik recognised the voice as belonging to Tweedle-blond. “They seem perfectly happy to see him, I should add.”

“Yes, please, hand them over.” Erik spread the organdie on his worktable and sighed. “Are they okay?”

“Wanda was very fussy at dinner today, as apparently 'Chars' makes carrots tastier, but otherwise we had no trouble. Pietro ate them all, so they couldn't have been that bad.”

“Pietro is turning into a regular rabbit.”

“We noticed.” The Tweedle laughed, once again engendering a mental picture of a boisterous Viking in the middle of a crowded bar, slapping a palm on the wooden table while he raised a mug of beer with the other. “Loki is grilling your friend presently, but it seems to be going well, so I think you can expect your children home soon.”

“Good,” Erik said, excused himself and hung up. He spared a brief moment to worry about Charles' well-being before he ambled into the kitchen, to check the contents of the fridge. Huh. It was mostly full. It was a shocking surprise out of nowhere. Or, it would have been, if there wasn't an envelope propped on the cheese, on which someone had written “grocery bills, CFX”. Erik rifled through the contents – there were ten separate bills, each in the whereabouts of twenty, thirty quid, excluding the one for fifty eight, which included a bottle of Dalwhinnie Highland single malt.

Either he managed to snag the flat next to the cheapest babysitter in town, or Charles also wanted to get in his pants, he thought with a hot sense of triumph. In the meantime, he grabbed a pink post-it note, wrote down his email and the request to forward him the figures in the future along with an account number. He slapped the note on the envelope and propped it on the cheese, confident that Charles would find it in the course of making sure Erik didn’t starve to death. He checked his computer far more often than he checked the fridge, sadly enough, so emails were still the safer bet.

Speaking of fridges, he had cheese and bacon and leftover chicken. A quick hunt through the other cabinets revealed a few buns, all of which added up to a sandwich, which Erik consumed with enthusiasm at the kitchen table. It was high time to get to work and sandwiches were the perfect get-back-to-work food.

3.15 p.m. saw the plate washed and safely stored, a necessity in a household filled with babies.

At 3.36 p.m. the doorbell rang, announcing Charles' return with the kids, after which the three of them went to Charles' place, leaving Erik alone with his vision.

4.23 p.m. was the moment Erik paused the fast-forward on _Master Chef_ and watched Gordon Ramsey build suspense on a foundation of cheese soufflés.

_CSI: Miami_ started at five, though Erik didn't switch to that until 5.06 p.m., at which point he had missed at least one dramatic donning of sunglasses.

They showed another episode next.

Horatio got his perp and was redheading it up all over the place, and just when the credits rolled Charles knocked on the door, bearing a maroon-spotted Pietro in his arms and a knackered Wanda clinging to his knee.

“How is it going?” he asked softly, pushing past Erik and into the bathroom, where he thoroughly washed Pietro's hands and face. “Sorry, he found a jar of food colouring I didn't even know I had.”

“I wanna be maroon,” Wanda said resolutely, looking very mournful.

“I also noticed their vocabulary when it comes to colours exceeds mine.” Pietro mewled and Charles shushed him as he wiped the remains of the dye of his face. “We had a fight whether this was rusty brown or maroon and I lost.”

“It's obviously maroon.”

“My first thought was red.”

Erik was, appropriately, appalled. “It's far too dark to be red. It's not red enough!”

Charles cocked his head to the side and rubbed at Pietro’s piebald forehead with a damp and soaped towel edge. “Yes, see, this is what we normal people refer to as _dark red_. I see how that could be a difficult concept.”

Pietro shook his head, dispelling a shower of droplets, turned like spinal cords went out of fashion, and threw his arms around Charles' neck. “Chars!”

“Time for bed, sweetheart,” Charles said, nuzzling Pietro's damp hair. “Where is Wanda?”

“What? Oh shit!” Erik ran out of the bathroom like his pants were on fire and dove into his workroom, where of course he found Wanda (it was idiotic of him to forget to lock it, now that Wanda had mastered the doorknob) leaving maroon handprints all over the clean paper he did absolutely nothing with today. “Darling, what did I say about coming in here?”

Wanda's whole face drooped. “Never.”

“Exactly.” Erik entertained the vision of one of the kids getting in while he was out and Emma's dress was there, and contemplated killing himself preventively. He scooped Wanda up and, noting the state of her hands and the paper she touched, he said, “Oh god, I'm going to have a heart attack.”

“Byoody fucking hey,” Wanda said brightly, just as they got back to the bathroom.

What?

“Excuse me?” Erik asked, looking up at Charles who turned an interesting shade of tomato-red.

“In my defence I was playing _Silent Hill_ with the headphones on. The bit with the school is extremely freaky, and it was dark. There's the creepy crawlies and then I turn and there are those two, eyes wet and reflecting computer light. I panicked.” He shuffled in place, taking great interest in his slippers against Erik's carpets, and huffed. “I'm very sorry about it and I promise it never happened again and won't happen again.”

“Fucking hey!” Wanda said, throwing her arms out in Pietro's direction.

“Byoody hey,” Pietro agreed solemnly and yawned.

“Right,” said Charles. “So I might have accidentally ruined their character forever. Sorry about that.”

“You'd have to try harder to do that,” Erik told him dryly. “Babies, what does mummy call daddy?”

“Fuckweasey,” they declared simultaneously, beaming with misplaced pride.

“I am very proud of my children,” Erik said, nonetheless, giving Wanda a kiss. “No worries, mummy will appreciate the vocabulary.”

“I take it the divorce went well?” Charles asked, and bit his tongue as soon as he had.

“It went fabulously.” Upon reflection the words came out biting, which could be misconstrued as bitterness. “No, I mean, the divorce was fine. We're friendlier now than we were before.”

“It's not really my place to ask, sorry.”

“I don't mind. Frankly I knew I was making a huge mistake as soon as I said 'I do', and Magda realised it not that long after. We tried, but then the work got crazy, I had to put in more manhours per week than is remotely sensible and poof, all pretence was gone.” Erik shrugged. Wanda cooed into his neck. “We better put them to bed.”

Erik made a mental note to discover what was it that Charles did to his kids during the day, because they had their eyes closed before they touched their pillows and by the time the adults vacated the room they were sleeping soundly. Erik left the door open a crack, just in case, but the babies slept the sleep of the dead, or at least comatose. It was going to be a good night.

“You are a lifesaver, Charles,” Erik said. “I owe you loads by now, and if you stick with it I will have owed you your own weight in gold, which I don't actually have, but I'm willing to work my way towards it.”

Charles, damn his soft, supple cheeks and strong shoulders, turned pink and ducked his head to the side, leaving his lovely collarbone open for ogling, and, if Erik were braver, licking. “I do love spending time with them, they are wonderful kids.”

Often in the course of their turbulent acquaintance Erik wanted to take Charles into his arms and hold him to his breast while muttering soothing, romantic nonsense, which was soon eclipsed by the desire to suck his dick, which was far healthier for an adult male, Erik felt. The urge was particularly strong now, as he watched Charles look towards his kids' door with warmth and enough affection to power up a small orphanage. They were standing close, mere inches separated their shoulders, and Erik would have taken a step, said a word, that sex was an option right now, that he'd be glad to make use of the lock on his bedroom door and take Charles to his bed, that it would be glorious.

Sadly, the real world had been leaving him angry messages throughout the day and by now the phone was ringing constantly, while the automatic secretary was dissolving in the vat of vitriol the common sense was forcing onto the tapes. He couldn't make a move now, not with the paper glaring at him in his emptiness and the clock ticking the night away.

Celine Dion wailed on the screen, promising an exciting night of phallic ships on a collision course with destiny. Erik switched the TV set off.

“No _Titanic_ for you?” Charles asked, looking up at him through his lashes.

“I need to have a goddamned portfolio of genius ideas by tomorrow noon, otherwise I'm going to go back to managing my sewing crew at the outfits I have already designed for the next few weeks.” How relaxing the perspective seems now, after a whole day of contemplating the phantom menace of _haute couture_. “Actually, that seems like a brilliant idea. Can I offer you a drink?”

He was certain he hadn't imagined the long, luscious look Charles cast in his direction, the kind that promised drinks, joy and merriment and plenty of cock. Sadly, one of them had excellent impulse control, because all Charles said, without a tremble to his voice, was, “Even I know that Emma Frost is not a client to be dismissed lightly. Go to work. I'll pick up the kids from the daycare tomorrow at about the same time, yes?”

“Thanks,” Erik managed and watched Charles leave without so much as an “I want to shag you on your ugly couch, but I appreciate your business conundrum so I will refrain for the time being, though I might sneak in the middle of a night for blowjobs.” Maybe he did imagine the look. Maybe he was going to fail, lose his job and he and his children would starve on the mean streets, eating food out of garbage - no wait, that wasn't being poor these days, that was being hip.

Anyway.

He locked himself in his workroom and by the time one a.m. rolled around he managed to doodle:  
1\. a completely fucking useless piece of crap,  
2\. a creampuff,  
3\. a coloured approximation of Charles, with a particular emphasis on the cherry-red lips and cerulean eyes,  
4\. Wanda,  
5\. Pietro,  
6\. Wanda and Pietro saving the world from a creampuff disaster,  
7\. a tree.

To be fair, the creampuff was pretty incredible. In a fit of creativity he added chocolate glazing, which turned out so good he almost licked it.

By three a.m. he was ready to commit ritual suicide. He could barely see and had in fact spent the last hour rolling the cerulean pencil back and forth between his hands, while in the back of his mind the majestic _Titanic_ crashed into an iceberg on a sea of ink.


	4. Chapter 4

Erik straightened. Half the pages on his desktop fluttered to the ground. The pencil – cerulean was a perfect, perfect colour – and the shape of the dress became scratches on paper. White would have to be predominant, naturally, but the navy blue – pencils scattered across the desk and Erik was certain the vermillion landed on the floor, but he didn't have time for that – he could start off with navy blue and build up on it, layer up the silk in various shades until the dress was shaped like a diamond with breasts. With the carefully pinned layering he could have the dress be entirely white with a hint of blue, giving the impression of ice moving across the ocean waters and, best of all, embroidery would ruin the piece. The key here was smooth surfaces, with the material texture doing the work.

Erik smiled at the sketch, but the smile was as short-lived as three forty-three a.m. He couldn't well show up to a meeting with Emma Frost with one idea, even if he was certain that was the one she was going to wear.

The muses agreed, because everything he managed to produce in the following hour was sub-par. The worst of the lot was the dress shaped like a dolphin. Erik snorted when his eyes passed the visual evidence on: as if Emma Frost could ever be a dolphin, he thought. No, she was more of a mackerel, cold and slippery, and coincidentally, shimmering with silver. Minus the fish-head, this could either be extremely glittery, but Erik wasn't a fan of glitter. Bold colours were more of his spiel. How to achieve metallic feel with fabric alone? Silver Lame? After a moment's deliberation he copied the general outline onto another sheet. Embroidery was an option, but there was nowhere near enough time. That chap half of America wanted to be president could evolve into a rational human being by the time he'd be done with this dress. Still, it bore drawing out, because with enough tiny stitches he could make it shimmer like a shoal in moonlight, and that was just poetic enough. Or, he could order fabric with woven silver thread, but that would require trips and arguing, detailed design notes for the manufacturer (Erik couldn’t think off-hand of a supplier who had fabric that did what he imagined this dress should do) and, as likely as not, Erik picking all the silver out of the fabric and redoing the silver bits himself.

The simpler version was tricky, and by the time he was finished they looked nothing alike. This one was more realistic, considering the timeline before him, and thus the actual pattern was created with accumulation of folds and ruffles, which would have been a nightmare, but nowhere near as bad as shimmering scales.

He celebrated the fruitful night with a cup of instant coffee with – without whiskey, he decided sourly, with one hand on the bottle. In three hours he would be taking the children to the daycare, no way in hell he was drinking. After the coffee he collapsed onto his bed, leaping up like he was bitten half an hour later, when the notion of down buried itself in his tired psyche. The product of a fever half-dream of feathers, chicks, owls, Satan and snowy plumage was, not surprisingly, fluffy and unacceptable. Now that he had bad things to say about the dress itself, anyone else could carry it off – Charles' sister, come to think of it, had the perfect face to carry this one – but Frost on a red carpet would give the impression that she had just slaughtered something and is now wearing the chick, its mother, and their entire flock, while stomping on their bloody entrails.

Four solid ideas should be enough to begin with, at such short notice, he thought, falling onto his bed. Time enough to nap!

*****

Three hours of sleep was enough to function like a rational, sane human being, Erik thought, mostly to convince himself, as he pulled the handbrake with more force than was required to rip off a young tree out of the ground. Then came the ballet of dragging Pietro out of the seatbelt cocoon and flailing in panic when Wanda was out of hers before he finished with her brother. It was an everyday panic, one that Erik learned to anticipate and not spit out his heart every time it happened. “I did buckle you up, didn't I?” he asked, just to be sure, and Wanda beamed.

“Daddy!” Her sticky-sweet fingers ended up in his mouth and hey, if she was on his arm and hanging on to his teeth, he knew exactly where she was. He staggered towards the entrance to the daycare, dragging Pietro along, only to run into Tweedle-dark.

“Good morning,” said the man, casting a superior glance at Erik and then behind him.

“Do you offer valet service now?” Erik asked, just as Pietro squeaked and detached from Erik's pant leg to grip Lawrence's. “Oki!” he exclaimed, as the man picked him up.

“I thought maybe Charles was bringing the children over as well.”

Okay, Erik thought. “Yesterday you wanted to tie him up and bury him in your basement and now you're shadowing the door just in case he shows up?”

“Let me put it this way: having spoken with you both, I find Charles a vastly preferable parent to your children. The basement is empty, for the time being,” Lawrence said and smiled.

Erik grinned back.

The arriving host of children wailed in panic, which was only quelled when Tweedle-blond begun kissing booboos, or something. Erik didn't notice, he was too busy staring Lawrence down. “He'll be picking the kids up again today.”

“Thank god for that, I’ll be able to get some cultured conversation.”

Any other day this might have evolved into a fight, but it was not this day. Erik handed Wanda over, told her to raise some hell on his behalf, and made for the studio.

*****

If anyone asked, Erik would never going to admit he was nervous, but somehow, since the moment he sent Azazel to Emma with the croquis, his teeth had begun chattering. He was done, if she didn't like the designs. He would fade into obscurity along with the rest of his people and they would end up making lousy t-shirts for H&M that no one would appreciate. The children would grow up penniless and unloved because he would become an alcoholic drug-addict, wallowing in pity – did people wallow in pity? Maybe later he'd figure out what he was supposed to wallow in, when the time came to do the wallowing.

“Stop it,” Moira said, hitting him over the head with a bolt of fabric. “You'll gnaw your fingers to the bone and you need those for working.”

There was that. “The hell are you doing?”

“We are understaffed currently, I'm sure you noticed.”

Erik looked back, at the industrious heads bent over their sewing machines and sighed. “Anything good came out of anything?”

“We did five mock-ups yesterday; you can go see them now, unless you'd rather sit here and panic. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a suggestion.”

“Go and see” was a bit of an overstatement, as the dresses were hanging in plain sight, all they needed was a mannequin. Together with Moira Erik unearthed a few dusty humanoid approximations in the closet and dragged them to the middle, where they would cause the most obstruction, as means of petty revenge.

The mock-ups, he was forced to admit, were well-done. Angel had a knack for making obvious stitching that complimented the cut, which was a major advantage: Janos, for his part, did great with making the fabric whirl even when it was still. As a result the dresses seemed windswept and held in place by a subtle web of stitches that Mucha would be proud of, an effect in line with Erik's overall ideas for the collection. “That isn't half bad,” he told the room at large. “You will amount to something yet.”

“Thanks, Erik. We live for your approval,” Angel said, puffing up in pride nonetheless.

That wasn't to say there was no room for improvement. Up close and personal it seemed that the fabric selection could use some work. “This is too flimsy.” Erik grabbed a pen from the desk and jotted down a few words on the page affixed to the lapel. “It needs a sturdier frame. Janos, that will take some remodelling, because I want to keep the windswept flow, can you handle it?”

Angel and Janos nodded thoughtfully and made notes, even as he grabbed a pincushion and went to town on the collar. He was in the middle of transforming the skirt of the fifth dress into puffy pants – no reason, it just seemed like a funny idea – when he heard a hacking cough and looked up to find Moira and behind her Emma Frost.

“You're early,” he said, straightening from the crouch. “You said four.” It was half past three.

“One of my appointments cancelled. Is this a bad time?”

“Whatever.” Erik tried to shrug, but some nervous tick brought his hand to his mouth in a desperate attempt to gnaw the thumb off. Luckily Moira slapped his hand down and together they marched into Moira's shoebox of an office, where they could have a measure of privacy.

“Let me begin by saying these were the sloppiest, least informative croquis I have ever been presented with,” Emma Frost said coolly, crossing her long legs. “It's been a long time since anyone had the gall to send me anything without fabric samples, to say the least, and don't let me get started on the maroon smudges.”

Erik bit his tongue and affected a horrible grimace, which could in no way be misconstrued as a smile. Fuck.

“Little can be done about it now, but I'll give you five minutes to show me some samples and save what little face you still have.”

Erik went, chased by Moira's glare, and returned with the scrapbook. He was lucky, in a way, that the dresses were relatively simple where fabric was concerned: they had enough of a selection on hand to display basic principles using Azazel as an unwilling stand-in for Emma herself.

The nervousness has come and gone by the time he finished explaining why the embroidery was not going to happen, mostly because it was hard to be nervous when the six-foot-two Azazel was standing ramrod-straight, staring off into the distance, while Erik arranged silks on his shoulders and hips. Throughout the presentation Frost made no move to indicate her overall opinion, favourable or otherwise, regarding the intrinsic value of Erik’s talents or Azazel’s plight. She merely sat there, with her hands folded, tapping the fingers of her right hand against the knuckles of her left.

“As amusing as the show was,” she said at last, watching Azazel negotiate his way out of the pale silk toga he was swathed in, “I trust you are aware that the maroon stains alone are reason enough for me never to set foot in here again, aren't you?” She gave both Erik and Moira a scathing glare. “It's your good luck I happen to like the one in which I sink the Titanic, but I expect you already knew that.”

Erik blinked. “You what?”

Frost handed him the first drawing, the icy dress, and indeed there was the Titanic in the background, split in half and slowly sinking, with a line of dialogue tying the female figure in the drawing to the catastrophe, and phrasing it thus took all the euphemisms Erik allocated himself this decade. Well fuck him sideways with a potato. “I'm very sorry about that,” he said, wincing. “I'm sure it was an accident.”

“Oh darling,” Frost said with a winsome smile. “As we get to know each other you will come to understand it wasn't. I have that effect on people.”

Erik was willing to believe that.

“I had a couple of questions, though. How high did you plan to take the slit?” Frost run a fingernail up the sketched leg, which was showing up to just above the knee, along with a hint at the layers.

“No idea, depends on your arse, really,” Erik told her and watched Moira silently explode.

Frost smirked, dipped her hand into her purse and came up with a chequebook, jotted down a figure and signed it. Erik would have expected the signature to be all flourish and no meaning, but her lettering was small and even, proclaiming “Emma Frost” in no uncertain terms. “Judging by the amateurish offering I should better remind you that any ideas you might have about cutting corners or saving money on fabric is stupid. This is to begin with, the cost of materials and the like – I will pay the balance once the dress is done.” She handed the cheque to Moira, who gaped like a beached porpoise, which suddenly discovered that leaping through air and breathing air are totally different things, and turned to Erik. “Now, I expect you will want to set up a schedule.”

Erik wanted to wring her neck, most of all, the conceited white bitch with a goddamned point. He took a deep breath. “I'll be working from home on this one. I'd like to start tomorrow morning – I need to arrange for my kids—“

“Spare me. I'll be there at eight sharp. I'm only free until ten, so you better work quick.”

“Two hours is nowhere near enough! I'm going to need at least three more on the first day.”

“I can come back around two. There should be more than enough time then.”

Erik might have boiled a little at that. “I won't have you sabotage my work by not giving me enough attention,” he growled.

“Sweetheart, you sent me a croquis with grubby maroon fingerprints on the back. I don't think my attention is a problem you will be having.” Frost smiled and threw her gorgeous hair back. “I will make every effort to be there when you need my presence but I am a busy woman and I presume you can be left alone for stretches of time without setting yourself or my dress on fire. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”

“Fine, tomorrow morning.”

“Good day to you.” Frost picked her white perfection out of the chair and sauntered to the door, unassisted, leaving Moira behind to sink her claws into Erik's neck. It was a surprise that she didn’t.

“I will murder you,” she declared instead, holding up the cheque as though it was a holy relic, “as soon as my hands are free.”

“Good luck with the sewing then,” Erik said, confident that Moira couldn't harm him for another three weeks and then he'd be worth his weight in gold. “Cash that, I'm going to need quite a lot of fabric.”

“Make a list and Azazel will deliver it to your door. Then go home and prepare, for the love of god.” That amount of wide-eyed worship was unusual, to say the least, when Moira could walk down Wall Street and make bankers cry.

“How much is it?”

“Five thousand pounds,” Moira said flatly. “And seventeen pence, for some reason.”

“That will really make a difference, those seventeen pence.”

Fuck.

On the bright side, he could finally work with that super-expensive sheer Chinese silks he'd been eyeing for years. Score one for him. Unfortunately, score five thousand point seventeen for Frost. The things he had to put up with to feed his children…

And so the bright spark of excitement died in the face of the grim reality that tagged along. If he was to meet Frost in his home at eight, then he couldn't take the children to the daycare, because the Tweedles didn’t open before seven forty-five and he was out of collars and chains, so there was no way the children could stay home until he was free. He couldn't pick them up, either, which meant he was going to have to engage Charles. Not that it was a hardship, the babies loved Charles, and there was ample evidence he took good care of them, but one would have to be a moron not to see that demoting a potential lay into a full-time nanny wasn’t all that sexy. Erik dug a thumb into his eyesocket and sighed. He would make it up to Charles later. He would!

*****

“I'll make it up to you,” Erik said seriously, with only a hint of desperation, leaning across Charles’ coffee table to pin him with his gaze as he kind of wanted to pin him with his hands. “I will. I swear. Anything you want, up to and including my liver and one of my kidneys. Not whole liver, mind, I'd like to go on living.”

“You can keep the kidneys and the liver, I'd like you to go on living, too.” Charles took a sip out of his mug, still fixing Erik with a searching gaze. “I'm not opposed, but there's a question I've been meaning to ask – don't you have friends or family members to do this for you? I'm basically a stranger.”

“My mother is in Israel, enjoying the sun, I don't want to call her back unless there's an actual emergency, and my ex-wife promises she will take them in nine days. Or eight. Little over a week, is my point.”

“Yes, that's too – I was under the impression networking was important for people in your industry.”

“You want to leave my children with people from the fashion industry?” Horror crept into Erik's mind, licking up from floor level like the tentacles of an angry elder god. “Are you insane?”

“I'm not! I'm just asking, Erik – you don't know me! For all you know I'm a demented serial killer!”

“You don't look like a demented serial killer.”

“You need to watch more shows on Discovery. It's always the ones you least suspect.” Charles took to staring into his tea as though he could divine the future out of it. “I didn’t even warrant a googling?”

“I know the daycare checked you out and alright, it was pretty stupid of me not to do that myself.” Erik swore to himself right then and there he would thoroughly vet the next person to come in contact with his babies. He would start with the search engines and he would google them until he knew which porn sites they frequented. “You seem fine. It's been three weeks and you could have gutted the babies anytime and didn't, which to me is a glowing endorsement.”

“I am fine, thank you very much. I just find it very mysterious that you would trust me with your children over people you have known for years.”

That was a doozy right there, up until Erik turned to look at Charles and found himself saying, “I don't have anyone else.” It ended up a lot more sappy and full of yearning than he meant it too, and Charles blushed to the roots of his hair.

“I take offence. I won't be manipulated into doing things just because you happen to be a handsome sort of chap with a penchant for romantic delivery.” The blush dissipated rapidly and Charles started speaking before it was fully gone, colouring his indignant statement with rosy pink.

All Erik could think in response was “score!” but what he said was, “I'm not above using it to my advantage. Please, Charles. I'll pay you – how am I not paying you right now is beyond me.”

Charles' cheeks flooded with redness again, as though the question struck home and set up camp there. “I don't want for money and I have time to spare,” he said with obvious difficulty. “I like kids.” This one sounded weak and feeble like a kitten and Erik treated it with all the belief the delivery warranted. “No, I do like kids, and yours are adorable.”

“Oh god, you are a paedophile,” Erik said giving in to momentary paranoia. Then he remembered his future may well depend on Charles not being insulted and positively disposed, so he added, “Well, so long as the babies are happy, but I will eviscerate you if they cry because of you, now or in the future.”

“Hilarious.” Charles scoffed at the coffee table. “I have a deadline. I'm no good with deadlines. My agent made me clear my schedule and he tries, but I can't work without a full schedule.”

Erik scowled. “So you are using my kids until inspiration strikes and you stuff them both into a cabinet and lock the door to work on your sorry excuse of a pamphlet.”

“A novel, thank you – I have won awards. And isn't that what you're doing, Mr Fashion Designer?” They glared at one another over the table, fighting a silent battle of wills, which Erik had to admit he was losing, partly on account of getting dumped in the middle of sky-blue eyes without a GPS.

“Do you consider yourself a cabinet?”

Charles cracked a smile and shook his head. “I am many things, but furniture is not one of them. I'll do it, like I said.”

“Thank god.”

“Does this include driving them to the daycare as well as from?”

“Tomorrow at least – Emma Frost will be here at eight.”

“Eight a.m.!” Charles set aside his teacup and whined, as only a teenaged goth can. “But that's the middle of the night!”

“I'm pretty sure the a.m. imply it’s morning.”

“Fine, fine, I said I'll do it. Sigh,” he said, actually went and said “sigh” instead of exhaling.

“You're absolutely insane,” Erik said, savouring every syllable. Charles smiled at him and waggled his eyebrows and they both laughed. “I meant it about payment. I feel bad letting you do this as a favour, especially if you keep feeding me.”

“You can repay me when my deadline comes knocking and I forget to eat.”

Erik goggled. “That’s likely to happen?”

“I've been hospitalised when I was finishing my second book.”

“Get out.”

“No, really – the ending was very tense, so I typed out the final thirty thousand words on nothing but coffee and tea, got up too early, clibed two flights of stairs and fainted in my editor's office. True story.”

“I didn't know writing was hard.” How hard could it be? You jotted down what you wanted the words to say, and hit save. No reason to go fainting over it.

“Yes, neither did my editor. Or Raven. Or my agent. To the point that they made the hospital MRI me toe to hairtip, looking for tumours. I narrowly escaped without a biopsy.”

“Your friends seem terrifying. Raven didn't seem that scary when she was serving me coffee, naked.” Erik had to wonder if Charles and his family made a habit of lounging on their furniture in the buff, because that couldn’t be hygienic and his babies frequented the place.

“Do not remind me.” The memory gave Charles a moment of consideration nonetheless, as he felt it was important he added, “And don't entertain any thoughts. She's very confident and very sexual, but she is not a hippie and I will kill you if your ideas of commitment aren't up to par.”

“Parse this for the tailor, would you? We are simple folk.” Erik finished the last of his coffee and stretched. First thing he would do, once this nightmare was over, he would go through the coffee-maker offering on the internet and buy one that could supply this divine liquid and came child-proofed.

Charles merely raised an eyebrow and took a sip of his tea. “You heard me. Are you up for a game?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Chess? Scrabbles? I also have _Mortal Kombat_ , _Super Farmer_ and _Mario Cart_ on the Wii.”

“ _Mario Cart_!” Erik sat up in his chair vibrating with enthusiasm. “I call Wiggler.”

Charles spent a total of three seconds staring at him, as though the new development rolled right out of left field and hit him on the head, but hey, Erik wasn’t the one with a console hooked up to the huge TV and _Mario Cart_ on the shelf beside it. “You are so on.”

They played until one in the morning and it was only when Erik was closing the door to his own flat that he realised he could have paused the game at any time and drag Charles over for a kiss, which, he was relatively certain, would have given the evening a very happy ending, the kind that movies blacked out in the knowledge that the viewer's imagination made it shine all the brighter. Instead he settled on having Wiggler beat Princess Peach (“I like Peach,” said Charles. “Raven made me play her every single time when she was going through her plumber phase and wanted to fight monsters and needed someone to rescue.”) to the finish line.

*****

Emma Frost was nothing if not prompt. Erik handed over his spawn into Charles' loving hands half past seven, along with a tumbler of coffee for the go and his car-keys, questioning the wisdom of the development only briefly, since Charles was still wearing the ugly t-shirt he slept in and his hair hadn't known the sorting touch of a comb. He smiled at Erik with all the brightness a small sun greets its twin on a collision course, so when trio left, yawning in unison, Erik stood in the door to his flat, staring after their disappearing arses. Well, Charles' arse in frayed jeans and the tops of his children's heads, considering the relative height and all. It was a good sight to begin his day.

Frost showed up three minutes before eight, breezing into Erik's futile attempts to straighten out his living room, or at least hide the plethora of stuffed creatures Pietro insisted on owning, likely in preparation of becoming a wizard and animating them into his private army. Erik raised his children right, he felt.

“This is an interesting choice of décor,” Frost said, dropping her very expensive purse on Erik's moderately priced couch, right between two unidentifiable stains that tended to crop up around Wanda.

“I have tiny children. Décor is lost on them, anyway, and money for décor is lost around tiny children, whereas nightmare-inducing stuffed creatures go a long way towards keeping them quiet.”

“Sensible.” She stood in the middle of the living room, this close to glittering in whiteness, and her grin kept getting bigger and bigger. Erik didn't like the look of that grin – he'd seen _Jaws_ and therefore had a good idea that this kind of smiling inevitably preceded tearing of flesh. “So, where do you want me?”

“On a stake,” he said smartly. “Failing that, I need your measurements.”

“I presume you own a tape, or will you trust my word for it?”

“If I look half as naïve as you seem to think I am, I'll be doomed when the kids grow up.” He had the tape and scissors, in the event stabbing proved necessary, laid out on the coffee table, along with his sketchbook. “You can undress in the bathroom, if you want, I put a bathrobe there, but we're going to be working here – my workroom is too small.” Not if they got on the table it wasn't, but that had its own disadvantages.

When he turned around Frost was standing in the puddle of her dress, pale and radiant in lacy white lingerie. “You're not one for shame, are you?”

“I used to be a model, darling,” she told him. Fair point. Erik, sharing that bit of employment history, was quite without shame himself, in that he could waltz naked down Oxford Street without Gok Wan’s reassurance, and he wouldn’t even blush.

“That's a small blessing.”

The measuring took a little less than an hour; Erik dutifully jotted down all the information next to the sketch of the dress, trying to work out if the initial design would work on her figure. The good news was that it probably would, but unless she wanted to look like a Q-tip there should be padding in the breast area, at the very least a push-up bra.

“Since you have time, we can try on some fabrics,” he said, throwing down the pencil. Luckily, he was able to get Azazel to score samples of the silks from various acquaintances, so he was now a proud borrower of a collective six yards of Chinese silks of five different shades of white, blue and navy.

“This is lovely,” Frost said, running the iciest white between her fingers. “I see the iceberg was a real thing.”

“White seems to be a theme with you, but I will want to add some blue.”

“ _Some_ blue?” she asked, taking a shimmering sheet and draping it across her shoulders. “I like the feel of this, but I want the dress to be white.”

“It will be. Not this blue.” Not that the aquamarine wasn't lovely in its own right – if Erik ever got to put Charles in Chinese silks, he'd go with aquamarine – but it was too warm. Aquamarine and azure was for the sun and summer and the rustling of palm leaves; Frost was more of the starry night over endless white, followed by a glaring white day under a sky so pale it ceased to be a colour at all, becoming instead a great big nothing over the blinding snow. “Navy, followed by a layer of cobalt, and then powder and all of that under white. The material is thin enough, so all this should merge smoothly into a gradient.”

“The skirt, yes – the bodice is white?” The dangerous glimmer of her teeth dulled into something warmer and pleased. “I like this,” she added, wrapping the sheet of navy against her hips. “I meant to complain about the lack of leg showing.”

“Do you want to be a meme?”

“I have vats of liquid nitrogen to store anyone who would dare.”

Erik was beginning to like her, no matter what his better judgement was yelling at him. “There's some room to manoeuvre, or there should be.”

“I'm dying to see how you get out of fashioning the folds.”

“The traditional way,” Erik said, which he intended to mean that he had no idea yet, only that he was sure he would, because fuck everything and anyone who said otherwise.

“Good. Anything else?”

It was past nine. If she had engagements at ten, she'd be running soon, and Erik could work out a mock-up on his own, now that he had the measurements, so that they could work out the folds – or begin to work out the folds – when she came back in the afternoon. “Not really. I expect to see you back here in a few hours.”

“Certainly.” Frost really didn't care about modesty, as evidenced by the fact she bent over to pull her dress back on and turned to Erik while she was buttoning up. “Provided no one utters a word while I speak I will be done by one p.m. I'll see you at two.”

Erik waved her out, hardly even noticing her departure, already thinking about the lining he'd be pinning the dress onto. The muslin was a poor substitute for silk, but it was good enough to pinpoint the potential problems, plus it was sturdy, so by twelve Erik had a reasonably Frost-shaped floor-length dress on the mannequin. The bodice would need support, sadly enough – luckily, Erik was right at home with construction work, so he managed to whip up an acceptable stiff framework in a matter of minutes. It would prove useless, most likely, when she put it on, but it was there, at least; a sturdy support to begin the pinning.


	5. Chapter 5

He let the time pass without noticing it had, so when his front door opened he was rather shocked to discover he had worked for four hours straight, without looking up from his table. “That was quick,” he told Frost.

“Not for me. I see you haven't been wasting time, for once.”

Twenty-four hours earlier Erik would have went into full-on hedgehog mode, rolled into a ball of poisonous ninja-quills and stabbed the offender to pieces. Right now he smirked and feigned a bow. “I was bored.”

He won an answering smirk from his illustrious client. “Should I get naked this time?”

Erik considered his creation critically. “At least no bra, I'd rather get the bodice out of the way soon as possible.”

“It looks simple to me,” Frost said, obediently stripping down to her panties.

“Which is the whole point. If this doesn't work, I'll just go out back and shoot myself in the head.”

“No need for the drama, darling. Who would feed your babies?”

“My neighbour. Given how they already like him more than me, I don't foresee any problems.”

“I’d imagine the legal struggles would be a nightmare.”

“Not if you knew Magda you wouldn't.” Erik didn't doubt Magda's commitment to the children, but he also didn't doubt her willingness to dump them both onto the first person willing to accept the responsibility. “Arms up.”

The bundled muslin slid easily over Emma's skin, falling to the floor in all its simplistic glory. The bodice was surprisingly decent - on par with any random _prêt-à-porter_ rag, not that he ever doubted his constructional genius. One of these days he'd try his luck at helmets or possibly body armour, he though as he zipped the dress up.

“You have a good eye,” Emma said, running a hand down her ribs. “It almost fits.”

“I try.” Point of order it fit well enough, so Erik settled for marking down the corrections with a marker and went on to adjust the skirt, which fitted somewhat less perfectly. How was it, he wondered, that he could make a near-perfect fit of a constructed bodice after a single measuring session, but give him a skirt and he'd sew it back to front? He was lucky Moira wasn't around, or he'd be fired faster than he could say Coco Channel.

Half an hour later he was despairing of ever getting the material to lie smoothly where it was supposed to lie smoothly. “My god, you have dreadful hips,” he said at last, nearly growling into the fabric, a lot of which was bundled in his mouth. “No purchase whatsoever.”

“I see this is not the best time,” Charles' voice said from the vicinity of the door, which, Erik only now realised, had opened seconds prior. Charles was in his flat with his babies and Erik was kneeling on the floor with his head so far up Emma's skirt it was practically shoved up her arse – well, in a metaphorical sense it was, as he wouldn't be here if Moira didn't send him on a holy mission to suck up to the frigid bitch.

“Hey Charles,” he said disentangling from the fabric, trying to sound casual, and succeeding on a fairly impressive level, considering the man he planned to bone at some point in the near future had just walked in on him in a situation where cunnilingus was the most reasonable explanation.

“I'll take the kids to my place, I just need a couple of toys – no, don't get up, I can find them on my own. Good afternoon.” Charles smiled at Emma pleasantly. “You would be the illustrious Miss Frost, correct?”

“I have a feeling not very many naked women grace this establishment, so I must be,” she said, gazing down at Erik like she must gaze at her own wardrobe, hanging in neat, white rows with razor sharp, dry-cleaned edges: like he was something to hand over to other people for cleaning, drying, pressing and folding. Maybe if he wasn’t on his knees with her skirt still between his teeth, it would less suspicious.

“You would be surprised. My own sister has developed a habit of walking around in the nude.” Charles shuddered and Wanda clutched his pants tighter. “Terrible ordeal, let me tell you. May I offer you some tea?”

“Yes, please. Erik is a terrible host.”

“I'm a good host!” Erik picked up his pincushion and stabbed a few into a particularly unsightly fold. “Today I'm working.”

“That's no reason to abstain from quality tea.” Charles had already settled the twins on the couch, dispensing plushies and kisses equally on both, and moved into the kitchen. Strange, as Erik wasn't aware he even had tea, but there Charles was, five minutes later, emerging with a fat porcelain pot Erik distantly recalled as having never used since he got it as a wedding gift from Azazel, and a couple of matching cups.

“I don't own tea,” Erik said, staring at the pot in wonder and then diving right back underneath the skirt, because that right there was a stroke of genius, which would solve the problem of Emma's ridiculous hipbones.

“You do now,” Charles told him cheerfully. “I bought a few varieties today, since I noticed the appalling lack.”

“I mean- I usually do have tea, I've just run out.”

“PG Tips.” Charles probably waved his hand as he spoke, no that Erik could see. “It's good for speedy breakfasts and emergencies, not really for drinking. I bought you some of the good stuff, the kind that you serve to guests. Or me.”

“You have your own tea.”

“And it's all the way across the hall.”

It was around this point that Erik realised, with dreadful shock, that his children, who were both present, were utterly quiet. The folds of the dress were a dreadful foe to combat, but nothing was too hard when his babies were on the line. Except this time they were perfectly fine, sitting side-by-side on the couch, staring at Emma with little stars in their eyes and chewing on objects too big for them too accidentally swallow. Holy shit, Erik thought numbly. Charles, where have you been all my life?

As it turned out the inspiration flowing from the teapot’s chubby snout served well, and by the time the tea was cold Erik managed to get the muslin to flow with Emma's figure, so that he could move on to fixing the bodice to everyone's satisfaction.

He kept working on it long after she went home, hardly noticing Charles until he walked in and put a steaming plate of dinner in front of him, and then waited patiently until Erik was done trying to eat with his needles and being confused about why that didn’t work. “Go kiss your kids goodnight,” Charles said. “Then you can go back to work, although I really recommend sleep.”

Pfft, Erik thought, and ignored the recommendation. Like hell he needed sleep.

*****

There had been days. Erik thought there had been days, at least; the texture of his eyeballs was different in the sunlight, so that meant there had been nights as well. How could he sleep thought, when the clock kept ticking in the back of his mind, reminding that there were only so many hours before he had to be done.

The dress fought him on every turn. No sooner had he arranged the heavy silken base to match the mock-up that it became apparent that unless he planned on dipping it in bleach he would need to apply many, many layers so that it would look white overall. The truth of it nearly struck him off his chair.

“This is the. Worst. Fucking. Thing!” he roared when the first drape of warm blue turned out to merely add a shimmer to the navy underneath. Erik dropped everything he was holding and slapped both his hands against his face. There was a difference in colour, so the direction was correct, but the change was minute. Which meant he needed to add more layers of silk. Which meant more hours spent rolling hems to avoid bulk, more hours spent trimming and basting and unpicking, and also more hours spent discussing this with Emma, because fuck if it wouldn’t turn out heavy.

The latter was easily solved. Emma looked at him, looked at the dress and said “Do it, darling.”

The former started speaking to him, in voices. This wasn’t usual for sheets of the finest Chinese silk, so Erik ignored that which he knew to be impossible. It started innocent, too: first they were small, shrill voices, demanding food and occasionally grabbing at his thighs, and those were easily dismissed, but sometimes the voice would be deeper and singular, and it would invariably say just one thing.

“Erik.”

It took a moment to register that it was not the first time his name was spoken that evening, or even that minute. Erik looked up from the insanely difficult topstitch and focussed on the mass-produced travesty of a shirt which was currently enveloping Charles' broad chest. “In a minute,” Erik said.

“Right now.”

“I'm busy.”

“Erik,” Charles said, unlike all the other times he said Erik's name, this time the “eh” was crisp and dry and the “rik” became the sound an iron nail makes when it's driven into plaster. “I very rarely yell unless decibels outside my control force me to, so please pay attention now. I have very dutifully attended to your children and yourself in the past two weeks. I have not complained on the nights they fell asleep in my bed and I had to resign myself to the couch. I have not said a word when I had to spoon-feed you a meal in the last two days. Nor am I planning to make a fuss about any of those things now or in the future.”

Erik felt his eyes close and open again, completely out of sync, first the right than the left. He wondered if mentioning all of those things counted as complaining, because if it did, he had Charles by the balls.

“Believe me when I say I have their best interest at heart, and it is in their best interest to drop what you're doing and go spend some time with them,” Charles said, crossing his arms.

Erik turned back to his stitches. “I have their best interest at heart. I work so that I don't have to worry about their education or anything else they might need. This one thing going well could mean everything to my career!”

“My god, it’s like talking to my mother. Erik – I'm not telling you to rethink your life choices. I'm not telling you to quit and find a nine-to-five desk job. I'm telling you to take fifteen minutes off your busy schedule to read them a bedtime story!” Charles’ hands slid out of the cross and fell to his sides, tight and on the verge of striking.

“I'm in the middle of something here!”

“And, unlike your babies, the needle will be in the same exact place you left it, whereas if you let your kids fall asleep on their own one more night they will fall asleep with a vague sense of unease, which you will never undo.”

Erik shrugged and stabbed the hem with the needle, nearly skewering his finger in the process. He cursed the flimsy material, for offering no resistance, and then he cursed his fingers, for containing blood vessels. Blood washed out well, cold water only, but it still detracted from the experience. “You're kicking it way out of proportion,” he told Charles when it became obvious an answer was necessary. “They'll live. Also, vague sense of unease? For a writer your ability to form credible threats is sad.”

“Of course they will live, I will tuck them in! The point is, I'm not their father and they have known me for a month. I have faith in your ability to dedicate a quarter of an hour of your day to your children's comfort, when you clearly spared none for your own.”

“I'm fine.”

“You are wearing _Toy Story_ bandaids on your forehead, where you stabbed yourself with a needle. I'd wager both were completely unnecessary.”

“Can you adjust your own busy schedule to not coincide with mine? It's distracting.”

Charles glared at him and Erik wouldn't have thought so by the Disney blue of his eyes, but the man could glare a tiger into a corner. “I will ignore that,” Charles said, obviously ignoring the fact Erik meant the words as a compliment to both his endearing attachment to his babies and his broad chest, which he wanted to lick rather badly. Some people, honestly. “I will ignore that because I know you are under a lot of stress, but you will get up right now and go read to your children. They are in their beds, waiting to be tucked in.”

“You will stop telling me what I will and will not do!” Erik dropped the needle (tucked it neatly into the seam he was working on, he wasn't going to lose his place, just because Charles threw a hissy fit) and got to his feet. Charles may have been capable of glaring, but Erik wasn't going to be outdone in the competition which got him his first modelling job. “You're not my mother. No one else gets to tell me what to do.”

“You children get to tell you what to do, and right now I'm acting on their behalf.”

“They are sturdy! A little neglect won't hurt them! Don't they have you to coddle them stupid?”

“Clearly, if they are anything like you, stupid is in their genome anyway.”

From up close it was apparent Charles didn’t shave this morning, which added a sharp texture to his face. “Did you just call my babies stupid?”

Charles squared his shoulders and said haughtily, “I called you stupid. Children need attention and not just the lifesaving kind. Fifteen minutes, Erik. Read to them, talk to them, hell, strip for all I care. They haven't seen you in a week! Give them a quarter of an hour to remember what you look like, and I'll be here in the morning to take them to the daycare.”

“Oh go to hell, you sanctimonious arsehole,” Erik said, shoved his way past Charles and stalked out of his workroom. He grabbed the first book he encountered – it was high on a shelf, so likely not one of the kids’ – and thundered into the nursery, where the thunder emerged as a weak whimper, because there they were, Wanda and Pietro, snuggled to some scary-looking plushies, looking up at him with wide, oddly-toothed smiles. Erik sighed as he sat on Pietro's bed, motioning for Wanda to get out of hers and snuggle to her brother.

In the distance Erik heard the door to his workroom close and the lock turn – Charles must have realised the importance of keeping the kids out – followed by the distinctive snit the main door made when closed. Erik let the information settle in the back of his head as he opened the book, Charles' book, he realised after staring at the front page for ten seconds. He grabbed Charles’ book off the shelf.

“Daddy?” Wanda said around her teddy's paw, making slurping noises as though she planned on sucking the saliva out. Erik didn't see why she bothered; it was already soaked all the way through. She'd been at it long enough that there was probably primordial soup in the middle, brewing with primitive viruses, ready to leap out and eat his baby alive.

“Hush,” he said, taking the bear from her mouth and throwing it on the “to incinerate” pile. “Cuddle up and shit. I'm going to read.”

“Shit!” the babies said in unison and giggled. Erik felt a perverse sense of pleasure at that. Let Charles explain himself to Lawrence tomorrow morning. What he wouldn’t give to be there and watch the drama! While he waited for the fallout he opened the book and tried to focus on the tiny, black needle marks all over the page.

 

 

“Fireflies had taken the cave a long time ago. Every surface and every edge was dotted with small lights, which dimmed every time she took a deeper breath. But that wasn't right, that couldn't be right, could it? Fireflies were gone. How could they be here, and so many at that? She stared at the biggest cluster, confused, waiting for the dimness to dissipate so that she could see. She waited for a long time, blinking in confusion, until it occurred to her that the fireflies shied away only when she exhaled, even though she was making the most dreadful noises. The mist of her breath against glass obscured her vision so if she wanted to see she would have to move her heavy limbs and wipe the mist away.

“She only had heartbeats to measure the time, and counting those was a bother, so she didn't. Time must have passed, but nothing happened, so she decided it wasn't important. Moving her hands was the important bit right now. It was far from easy – they twitched one finger at a time, before finally inching up and even that was hardly a feat worth mentioning: instead of bringing her hands up against the glass all she could do was drag them up her skin until with a tremendous effort she could paw at the mist in front of her. Stars swam in front of her eyes. She might have passed out for a moment, but there was no way to judge.

“Heartbeat by heartbeat her strength returned, until finally she felt ready to push against the glass, at which point she realised the return was an illusion. The glass didn't budge. The lights flickered steadily, on and off, becoming more distant by the minute, as she continued to struggle, but the glass remained immobile.”

 

 

He continued to read in a low voice until, around page seven, he forgot he was supposed to be reading aloud. He got all the way to page fifty-six, where the heroine finally remembered the concept of cold and found clothes to wear, before he realised that there had been no word of protest, despite the fact that both children had already figured the link between a steady stream of spoken words and the pages of a book turning, thus the children were both asleep. He bent to kiss each on the forehead, right where they smelled of baby powder and peach shampoo the strongest.

Erik contemplated for a moment the wisdom of moving Wanda back to her own bed. It was unlikely they would hurt each other during the night, so she might as well stay. Pietro was a hazard when he was awake, but once he was asleep he wouldn’t move, so she was perfectly safe.

As if the universe wanted to prove that he was still capable of rational decisions, when he stood up it twirled around him, taking away the reference of what was and wasn’t horizontal. He swayed and nearly split his head open on the shelf, which had the unfortunate effect of driving home the fact that he was tired as hell. The hand he tried to prop himself on was the hand holding the book, which in turn reminded him of something else. He'd yelled at Charles. He should probably apologise. Or maybe not. Why should he apologise for speaking his mind and not letting the interfering bastard dictate how he should live his life? No way in hell. In fact, now that he had a minute to think about it, he should go yell at Charles some more, for daring to tell him what to do. His babies, a problem. Dumping them on Erik for fifteen minutes, as if! As if it would kill him to sit with them for the quarter of an hour required for them to fall asleep. Stupid bastard. Well, Magda was picking them up tomorrow, and they would no longer bother Mr Busy Novelist.

And his book sucked, too.

Erik crossed his living room and then the hall, dropping the book on the coffee table as he passed. Charles' door was unlocked, further serving to drive home the point that Charles was a complete idiot who'd let anyone wander into his flat. Erik might have forgiven that (no one would enter the building unless they got past the doorman and the doorman had a wicked good memory for faces, shocking, under all the hair. It made him look like a badger), were he sitting on his couch, sipping tea and watching the door, but he wasn't. The room was dark and Charles was missing. He wasn't in the bathroom either, or the kitchen, but there were a couple of pots on the stove, covered and bearing a note with Erik's name in the first sentence.

Erik glared at the food (beef stew with peppers, copious amounts of onion and fried potatoes on the side), slammed the lid back down and went on in pursuit of Charles. He found his quarry in the bedroom, swaddled in cotton sheets. Cyan was a pretty colour, and it worked very well with Charles' skin tone, even if the pattern was very generic and worthy of IKEA. By complete coincidence Erik owned the same exact set of sheets, purchased for their colour. The babies loved jumping on his bed when it was swathed in blue, so by the time they fell asleep everything would be babies and bouncing and his whole bed would smell of baby powder and peaches.

His whole bed did smell of baby powder and peaches. Erik sank into the mattress gratefully, not even mad that the pillow was missing, and hit the sheets with his face. A moment of wiggling won him half a comforter and another mouthful of the smell of warmth, of happiness and safety. Charles muttered something in his sleep and turned, baring his throat, and Erik didn't think long before curling up to him and nosing up at the soft edge of Charles' jaw. Peaches, he thought drowsily.

He closed his eyes for just one second and when he opened them again he found Charles looking at him from under bluish hair and through colourless irises. The moon sneaked her colour scheme into the room through the wide window, and took the sun while she was at it, the cheeky bitch. Erik found some purchase in the softness of the mattress and crawled forward no faster than the progression of a glacier down a mountain's slope, catching Charles' mouth in a kiss. His vision dwindled down to nothing, he could hear very little outside of the distant rumble of car engines, a sound thoroughly forgettable in a city, but Charles’ lips were soft and moist, parted in anticipation of a breath. He was very warm. Sweet. Sweet also. His breath tasted like peppermint and his hair smelled of peaches. Erik couldn't move further than an inch, his body defied him in the most horrid fashion, but he managed to drag a hand up and curl it around Charles' bicep, praying for strength to move a little further, to be able to wrap both arms around him, and most of all to deepen the kiss.

When he next opened his eyes the sun was busy firing up the white spots on the otherwise cyan sheets. The bed was empty, or nearly so, because Erik was thin enough not to count. His face was velcroed to the sheets by means of his stubble, and he was still wearing his jeans. Stupid idea, to wear jeans to a bed. Charles would be furious.

Erik rolled over and grasped at the alarm clock on the night-stand, dislodging a stack of books, every one of which had a colourful piece of paper stuck in a random place. The clock had one hand pointing to eight and the other to three. Oh fuck, was Erik's first thought, I slept for nearly eight hours, it's almost four.

Then he looked again, blinked and let his sight refocus on the relative size of the hands. The shorter pointed eight. “I slept for twelve hours. Fuck!” he was out of bed in a flash, running straight into a note on the door.

“You needed the sleep,” proclaimed the note. “Don't you yell at me. You have enough time to finish the dress, Cinderella. Your keys are on the table by the door and your breakfast on the kitchen counter. Eat it.”

It arrived, unbidden, in Erik's mind, the thought that he had climbed into Charles' bed last night, while the latter was sleeping, and he had woken up in the very same bed a short time later, whereupon he proceeded to molest his gracious host and the nanny of his children. Shit. His only defence was that he had fallen asleep before he managed to do any serious damage. He was lucky he hadn't woken up handcuffed and surrounded by the police. That would make a delightful morning – a gang of bobbies glaring at him from beneath their hats. Erik could already see the headlines.

He ate the breakfast, because what else was he going to do? He already lost a few pounds because of this infernal garment and he had miles to go yet. Charles made him waffles with creamed cheese and spring onion. Erik hoped that on whatever planet Charles was from delicious breakfast food wasn’t an early warning of siccing the police on the invited party. He cleaned up after himself as best he could, considering Charles’ kitchen was a foreign land to him, still, and having established the children were missing, went back to work.

Strange, how the dress looked less like a shroud of angels and all things good and bright in the universe in the light of the day. With the sun as it was even the halfway effect was astounding; the skirt shimmered when the air around it moved, creating precisely the effect Erik meant for it to create. It was going to be magnificent.

He repeated that to himself every hour, particularly when the ten inch line of lovely, even stitches had to be undone and laid over again, a third of an inch to the right, because the fold didn't shimmer properly. That was fine. That was grand. Erik had that in hand. Despite the setbacks, the layers of ice covered the deep blue sea, building towards a mountain of snow and frozen death, one that was only a human shape away from being an exact likeness of Emma Frost.

Erik sat in his cheery sunlit workroom and glowed with self-satisfaction. He was a fucking genius and the world was finally going his way.

He barely even noticed when the morning segued into an afternoon, pausing only when the white became a puzzling shade of gold, and then there was a knock on the door.


	6. Chapter 6

“Erik,” Magda said, pouring her glorious hair into his workspace. Sadly, the rest of her followed.

“The hell are you doing here?” Erik turned back to the dress and finished the last inch of the fold, tied it off with a flourish and bit through the remaining thread, because fuck Frost, that’s why.

“Oh my god,” Magda said, covering her mouth. “That is stunning!”

“I know.” Right, the kids. She was supposed to take the kids. “I haven't packed the bag yet, give me a minute.”

Magda folded her hands behind her back and inspected the edge of the bodice. “No worries, it's already in the car.”

“What? How?”

“Your new husband packed it for me.”

“My—what?”

“He is adorable, I'll give you that. And kind. He looks like fairies visited him in his crib.” Magda smiled a soft, smitten little smile, the one she wore when Wanda and Pietro were clean and sleeping in her sight. Then her face became serious. “Erik, I think he'll bring up the children to be his immortal army and use them to take over the world.”

“That's… an interesting perspective. Have you been smoking illegal substances again?”

“No, I mean it. He's too kind and polite, and far too intelligent to be a secret serial killer. I'm convinced he plans on world domination, the kind where the world gladly turns over the reins to him and thanks him for the privilege of being able to serve him.”

“I think you might have accidentally sat in front of a mirror.” Erik tucked the needle in-between the folds, stood and immediately sat back down. “Oh god, you've talked with Charles.”

“Darling, he's the man you let touch my kids. Of course I talked to him.” Magda touched a fold of the dress and tilted it up, so that the light caught the surface. “This feels fantastic. Looks even better.”

Erik managed to run every possible scenario of infamy that Magda might have put in Charles' head. He was so dead – deader than he had been this morning, when he woke up after having crawled into Charles' bed while the latter slept, which was pretty damned dead. “What have you told him?” he asked dangerously, trying to mask the growing panic.

“Relax, dear.” There was a soft smile on her lips, soft and bitter like cocoa. “You like the poor boy, I know. You'll be pleased to know that I merely reiterated the Christmas story.”

“Jesus fuck, Magda!” Christmas of last year Erik was getting _House of M_ to get up and count as a serious fashion studio, which could support the five people that worked there, and thus he was prone to running out of the house at odd hours in response to vague phone calls from Azazel. Magda became convinced that he was having an affair, which drove the nail into the solid oak “I’m really more of a five than four degrees Kinsey” coffin of their marriage. Thank god she'd come to her senses before it was time to face the judge, or she'd have serious trouble foisting the babies on him alone. But to learn now that she’d imparted the story to Charles! Erik was feeling decidedly murderous and he was in a room full of scissors, knitting needles, needles and plenty of wire. He could sew Magda's hair into his newest collection and call it “why you should never piss off Erik Lehnsherr, fucking hell, woman.”

“I have no idea where you found him, but do share, because I want a piece of that.” Magda sighed dreamily and there went the luscious curtain of hair again, tumbling over her shoulder and into the cleavage. 

“I have never cheated on you,” Erik said not even trying to feign amiability. “I would have never cheated on you. Not even when you persisted in having one vagina too many to be interesting.”

“Well, I know that now. I said I was sorry, didn't I?” She was annoyed and that in turn annoyed Erik, because accusations of adultery were not something that can be apologised for and then swept under a rug.

“Then why the hell would you tell anything like that to Charles!”

Magda laid a hand on his arm and stroked upward, until her palm was covering his cheek. “I meant it as a joke.”

Fantastic. Now Charles sat there convinced Erik was some sort of a Lothario, going round fucking people on Christmas, while his wife stayed home nursing the babies. Yeah, this would certainly make getting into his pants easier. Fuck.

“Fuck,” Erik said and stalked outside, only to run into Charles, who had Pietro on his shoulders while Wanda tried to get his pinkie to stick out at the appropriate angle from a small, pink plastic teacup.

“Chars!” Erik's firstborn was saying reproachfully. “Pinkie out!”

“Of course, darling.” Charles made a show of struggling to comply, then beamed bright as the morning sun on a cloudless morning when he succeeded. “Ah-ha! There we go.”

“Yay!” Wanda said, clapping her hands and forcibly dragging them apart again, when the sticky substance on her palms prevented for the repeating of the motion immediately.

“I do hope Erik's paying you a lot,” Magda said. “In fact, maybe you'd accept one of the children as payment for your services?”

“Oh, Erik would be miserable with only one.” Charles finished his imaginary tea and stood, giving Pietro the best ride of his life (Pietro didn’t spill the imaginary tea, Erik was pleased to note, and his pinkie was sticking out just right. Wanda was a cruel, but effective, taskmaster), judging by the squealing. “Are you taking them away?”

“Only for the week. Come here Wanda. Say your goodbyes, we have to go now.”

Wanda won Erik's eternal admiration by clinging to Charles' leg and looking up at him soulfully as only curly-haired little girls know how. “Chars, come with us?”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart, I can't. I have to work.”

“Chars!” Pietro wailed, fisting his little hands in Charles' hair.

“I hope they wail every night,” Erik muttered to Magda, only a little vindictively. “Especially when they are with your parents.”

“Believe me, I will install alarm clocks in their beds for that exact purpose. Say goodbye, children. We are going.”

“Goodbye Chars,” said the babies in unison, clinging to the part of Charles they had in their immediate reach, clinging with such ferocity Erik had an inkling letting go wasn't an option. Charles clearly arrived at the same conclusion, because he disengaged their hands and knelt, pulling Pietro off his neck and to the floor, then drawing them both closer so that their little heads, one auburn, one pale blond, rested on either of his shoulders.

“Goodbye babies,” he whispered. “I will miss you very much.”

It was rather heart-rending to be forced to pick Wanda up, when her hands were still stretched out towards Charles, and carry her outside, to Magda's car, and buckle her in her little seat. “I'll see you soon, darling,” Erik said, kissing her curly hair and coming away sticky. “Good luck washing the goo out of her hair,” he told Magda.

“I'll just hose them down at home.” Magda handed Pietro over for kisses and buckling in, kissed Erik’s cheek, and there they went, whimpering for daddy and Chars, with their unfeeling monster of a mother driving away.

Erik turned on his heel and walked right back inside, intent on talking to Charles and maybe letting him know that he wasn't that creepy generally, and that he preferred his bed partners awake and willing, and none of this creepy “hi, I know we haven't talked about this before and you've given me no indicators, but here I am, in your bed, wanna fuck?”

Except Charles' door was closed. Locked. His door was never locked. Erik wandered in in the middle of the night – eight p.m. whatever, Charles was clearly asleep in bed – because it had been left open. Now it was closed.

“Hot fucking damn the sodomising monkey butlers on a pogo stick,” Erik said out loud. It meant Charles didn't want to talk to him again. Which wasn't a huge leap to make, Erik barely wanted to talk to himself on most days, but what's a man to do, when the only conversation partners find soap bubbles riveting? So Erik withdrew and slunk back to his workroom, emerging periodically to cry into waffles and syrup, because he liked Charles, goddamnit. Charles had Mario Cart!

The sad fact of life was that Erik had a dress to finish, one that will accomplish with silk what Photoshop did with gifs, and so there was no time to waste. The floor wasn’t that big, he would hear Charles opening the door and then he could go to Charles and apologise. Yes.

Erik surfaced from work induced haze three days later, woken, like a magical fairy princess, by the cool voice of Emma Frost.

“Darling, you ought to learn to close your door.”

“You're early.”

“I'm never early, or late. I arrive precisely when I mean to. Your sense of reality is dimming.”

“That could be true, sadly.” With no babies to structure his days, Erik didn't know Tuesdays from April. “Well, since you're here anyway, I'm almost done.”

“I can see that,” Emma said. Her tone betrayed exactly nothing, at least until Erik had her stripped and wrapped in the silks. “Well,” she told her reflection. “I will give you that. It looks good.”

“Go to hell, it looks fantastic. Take a walk.”

Though the living room was only a so-so approximation of a catwalk, Emma sashayed alongside the couch, shimmering in her icy-white-on-a-bed-of-frozen-sea-blue dress. At last she paused by a mirror, propped her hands on her hips and stared. “Is this it?”

“Minor adjustments to the topmost layer, I think I need to pad the bodice and I'd go over the stitches just in case, plus it could do with a sprinkling of glitter in the chest area, maybe Swarovski seeds in the layers, but essentially yes.”

A slow smile spread on her face. “And with three days to spare. Well done, Erik.” The phone rang, but as it wasn't Magda or Moira Erik ignored it. “Did you manage to fit within the quota I gave you?”

“Barely.” The silks were expensive as hell, especially once it turned out he needed more than he thought. He wasn’t thinking about money, though, so he while was still waiting for Moira to let him know what the balance was, he didn’t much care. It hardly mattered; with a _House of M_ dress on Emma Frost Erik could afford to be screwed over, which he wasn't, really. He'd probably charge more for a dress like this and the years it had taken off his life, but the pay was adequate.

“Hand me my purse.”

Erik did and Emma proceeded to use his back as a table to sign another cheque. Because why bend to an actual table, when there were men standing idle? “And another thing. Find yourself a decent tuxedo, my date just cancelled.”

“What?”

“ _Captain America_ beckons, darling. I need a strong, male arm to hang onto at the premiere, but in a pinch you will do.”

“I'm a designer. Take Azazel, if you need a minion.”

“Be reasonable for thirty seconds. The dress might need fixing on the fly.”

Erik bristled. “It is sturdy enough to survive a night of skydiving.”

“And I will put it to that test.” Emma wandered to the floor mirror and admired her striking silhouette and finally, at long last, she smiled. “It is gorgeous, darling. You deserve praise, and what better chance to garner applause than to show you off alongside your creation?”

“Do you remember what happened the last time I went to a premiere of anything?”

“Yes, Sebastian is still talking funny.” Emma offered him a blinding grin and Erik had no choice. “You're mature now. A father, I'm given to understand. You won't punch people who annoy you, of which there will be plenty.”

“If I punched people who annoyed me I would be in jail by now. I punch people who piss me off,” Erik said.

“That could be a way to go. I wish it was. Sadly, considering I can reliably be hidden by most streetlamps, I must settle for sarcasm.”

“What a tragedy. Yeah, I'll go, whatever.”

“Perfect. We are flying out the night before; I will send my limousine for you at three. If you have any questions, call my PA.”

Why should he even feel surprised she had his tickets already. “Don't expect me to put out, unless you have a brother.”

“My brother prefers them with a little more meat on their bones, sugar.” The dress folded gracefully around her body and all but floated into Erik's expectant arms, while Emma got dressed. “Do find yourself a good tux, would you?”

“I’ll try.”

She fluttered out of his flat without a goodbye, leaving Erik staring at the cheque in his hand. Another five grand. “Fuck me,” Erik said with a broad grin.

Buoyed by the money and the fact that the dress was finally, blessedly finished (adding crystals and checking the hems was still work, but a few hours should see him right), Erik all but waltzed out of his flat and let the good vibrations carry him to Charles' door. He should bring flowers. Maybe chocolates. In fact, he should offer to cook dinner. Charles cooked him so much food, Erik had been living on it since the babies left, rarely bothering to heat it beyond thawing, and it was still tasty. He owed Charles food.

He knocked, assuming his least threatening persona, and folded his arms behind his back. There were footsteps inside, but they were slow, so Erik reached out and turned the knob, and then the door opened and the person standing on the other side was 1) nearly naked, 2) not Charles.

“You towel is slipping,” Erik told the tall blond fellow flatly.

“Yeah, I—Oh, god. I'm so sorry; Charles can't seem to grasp the importance of appropriate sizes.” The towel was hardly bigger than a dishrag and the man was clutching it to his groin as though he was trying to apologise for having a dick to cover in the first place.

“Who is it?” Charles asked, coming out of the bedroom with his hair wet and plastered to his forehead, obviously straight from the shower. He carried a large towel which he immediately handed to the blond. “Erik! Did the babies come back yet?”

In the face of such blatant eight-feet-tall and fabulous naked blond hunk, one who spoke with a clear American accent, Erik felt justified in a sudden and unexpected bout of dislike of his neighbour. He had come to apologise, goddamn it, and possibly get laid, not to have his affections laughed at by Captain Nopants.

“They aren't coming back,” he said. “I hired a nanny. Thank you very much for your help, if you decide you want compensation let me know – best of all, send me an email.”

“But—I like taking care of them,” Charles started to say. “I love your kids.”

“Good day. We won't bother you again.”

Erik closed the door with unnecessary force, stalked to his own flat, slammed those doors, too, locked it for good measure, and sunk into his ugly couch. Fuck Charles, seriously. Didn't take him long at all to get over him, did it? Why the fuck should he care about his stupid next door neighbour who couldn't keep it in his pants long enough to be wooed or even apologised to. He and the babies were better off without his dumb arse. Yes, absolutely.

*****

Three days later Erik was still sulking, not that anyone would know. This was more or less his normal countenance, regardless of how many “stop sulking!” messages he had on his phone and his inbox, or how many times he ignored knocking on his door. It had taken superpowers to resist the latter, because a few times Charles had asked, loudly, to be let in, but Erik was smarter than him and he kept his doors locked.

So there.

So what if the babies called and, after a short reiteration of how their grandparents sucked, demanded to hear from Chars. Or the time Erik was starving and found a previously uneaten box of stew in the back of his freezer (which he ate, thank you very much, because food was food and not the right item to make a moral stand over). Or that moment lighted up by the grin on Charles’ face, when Princess Peach pulled ahead of the competition. Or any time Erik was in the shower and remembered the kiss and what he imagined should have followed. That was a particular time he felt he had done a great job closing down a chapter of his life and moving on, entirely away from the pretty neighbour. Entirely. 

Luckily, he was far too busy to spend time reminiscing about his devastated hopes. Fashion Week was approaching and, with Emma’s dress finished (he devoted an evening to redoing the hem and gluing a handful of very expensive crystals to the bodice, but that was entertainment rather than work. The dress was done, and the following morning Azazel took it to Emma, with a bouquet of crimson flowers, because he’d be damned if he gave the bitch the satisfaction of converting him to white and whiter. He got a text message which only said “ha,” in response) he could show up at the studio and lend a hand with the rest of the collection, working like a civilised man, with a sewing machine.

He whiled the days until the premiere away staying at home with the lights off, in case Charles thought he was home and came knocking, and attending the sewing sessions at the studio. Moira was a little sour since he didn’t think it fit to take a photo of the dress he was banking their careers on, but after she’d seen the cheque she admitted she didn’t care if it had a pony on it; if Frost liked it, so did she. 

All too soon the eve of the premiere arrived. Erik scrubbed himself clean and borrowed one of their better suits. He would never admit to it, if asked, but when Moira suggested he make use of his professional experience and model the line, instead of laughing her out of the room, he stripped and put on all the suits they had, one after the other, even the one he certainly wasn’t going to wear, because it was black all over, varying only the texture. He designed that one under duress (his design had actual colour, Azazel had asked to be allowed to contribute and that had been it) and had no intention of signing his name on it.

“This one,” Moira said firmly as he did his best nonchalant “fuck you, I’m a model” walk down the limited space of the studio in the most frilly thing they had, perfect for gay weddings and clown funerals.

“Seriously? I mean, I designed this thing, so I know it’s perfection incarnate, but I’m not supposed to look sparklier than Frost.” He would wear it, no problem – magenta was a fantastic colour, and the frills only added to the experience, but Emma would kill him.

“Look where I’m pointing.” The suit she Moira pointing to was the second one he modelled.

“Are you kidding me? That was ten suits ago!”

“I just wanted to watch you drop your pants multiple times. A girl can dream,” Moira said, while Angel nodded so enthusiastically her dragonfly-wing tattoos fluttered on her shoulders. 

Erik started undoing the many buttons on the jacket, still staring at Moira, but not so intensively he didn’t see Janos eyeing him out of the corner of his eye. “What does Sean have to say about a girl dreaming?”

“Sean is very happy to let me dream, thank you. I’m pretty sure he will thank me once he’s had a smoke and I show him the video.”

“What video?”

“Oh, nothing, never mind. Definitely that suit.”

The suit in question implied time was only an option and the regency era was the best era, by having the ink-blue waistcoat lovingly hug the wearer. It was utilitarian, posh as holy fuck and thus a perfect match to Emma’s dress. Erik could have picked that one himself, except the hours spend not angsting over Charles and his stupid, naked American boyfriend fried his brain. 

Emma’s limo arrived promptly, collecting him from his home and delivering him into Emma’s manicured clutches. It took Erik a long moment to notice that she was wearing nail polish and not much else. “My apologies, I will be ready in a minute,” she said, dropping the towel and heading into the bathroom. Erik poured himself into a chair and dosed, while her PA, a solemn young man with red-tinted glasses, finished smoothing out Erik’s creation into a body-sized travelling bag. He barely remembered the flight, or the drive to the hotel. Emma had things to do, and aside from the three of them the plane was nearly deserted, so Erik whiled the hours away turning pages of _The Scarlett Witch_.

The American afternoon was extremely busy. Emma threw him to the wolves, who gnawed off his stubble and pampered him with manicures, pedicures for no apparent reason, and gushed over his suit. Erik suffered through the ordeal for the complimentary moisturising facial and a long Thai massage, which lasted for close to a century. He emerged from his bathroom that evening refreshed and gleaming with good health, despite the jet lag, which still hung over his shoulders, like an angry parrot.

“Darling, you look delectable,” were Emma’s first words, when he stepped into her suite shortly before they were scheduled to appear on the red carpet.

“I did mention putting out is not on the menu?”

“Even if I wear a hobbit wig and a strap-on?” Emma turned in front of a mirror, admiring, no doubt, her astonishingly enormous lacy panties, stockings and a matching strapless bra. “Should I keep the bra or lose it?”

“We spent five hours that one Tuesday making the bodice so that you wouldn’t have to.”

“Fair point.” Off came the bra, and then Emma’s assistant approached, carrying the fine fabric of the fruit of Erik’s labours in his mortal hands. “So, are you sure you won’t put out? This would be the third or so date.”

“If by date you mean forming elaborate plans of horrid murder, then by all means. What do you mean hobbit wig?”

“Your adorable manny, of course. He could give Elijah Wood a run for his money.”

Erik tried not to leap and strangle anyone blond. “I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

“Well, I could draw you a map, but since you are unavailable, maybe I will settle for Mr Baggins. The children were both yours, yes?” Emma’s grin was a thing out of Tim Burton’s overactive imagination. 

“Do what you want, I don’t care,” Erik said and very nearly sat down, before he remembered about the suit and the sitting down he had yet to do, and the creases. “Does this place offer a coffee dispenser of some sort?”

“Scott can make you an espresso, if you take over his zipping duties.” Emma made sure to employ her most lascivious tone, although if she wanted to make Erik wince, she failed.

“You are a disgusting human being,” Erik told her, but stepped up and began hooking the fastenings of the bodice, while Scott fucked off to the kitchenette. “If you picked up any weight since last week, I will kill you.”

“That’s what I have you for. I might even have a spare sewing kit sequestered somewhere.”

“Won’t help you once I’ve killed you.”

“At least I will look fabulous in my bodybag.”

Emma had her hair pinned up into a perfectly smooth wave high on the back of her head, and a few crystal pins held it in place. Her makeup was likewise conveying the idea of smoothness and luminosity. A simple diamond necklace encircled her throat. Even her lips were so pale pink they were very nearly white. With the dress hugging her every curve she was exactly what Erik intended for her to be: a glowing, gleaming iceberg.

“You do not disappoint,” Emma said, staring into the enormous mirror. “And you make a handsome accessory.”

The PA appeared with a cup filled with coal-black sludge, with aromatic caramel-coloured foam on top, which Erik topped out with a tonne of sugar and gulped down with no preamble. “Shall we?” he asked, offering his elbow.

“Gum,” Emma said, and the PA – seriously, Erik thought, what the fuck – offered up a dessert plate with a few pieces of mint chewing gum. “I’d rather you didn’t risk the fabulous suit on brushing. That is one of yours, I presume?”

“It would defeat the purpose if I showed up to advertise wearing something I didn’t design.”

“Smart man. My compliments to the tailor, too.” Emma turned to the PA and raised a brow. “Is the limousine ready?”

“Yes ma’am. Anything else?”

“Oh, yes, my phone.” A small, blindingly white bag which had Moira written all over it in block, crystal-studded capitals, appeared. 

“I don’t remember that.”

“Your people supplied. Lovely bunch of folks.”

To be fair to the universe in general Erik might have missed a lot in the past month. The apocalypse, elections, everything. Even his people suddenly becoming lovely. Fortunately Emma let him brood on the subject while they filed into the limo and were driven to the theatre, and then he brooded and sulked simultaneously, because the whole place was swimming with paparazzi. He should have foregone the suit and wear the t-shirt Azazel made him, the one with the photo of Azazel post-accident and a subtitle of “he tried to take my picture, I took the structural integrity of his ulna.” It was the best Christmas present he had ever gotten, with the possible exception of the fire engine Mama bought him when he was five. It had glowing lights which rotated and it made noise when driven and really, whenever Erik felt maudlin about his relationships he thought back to that truck and the true love they had. No one had ever measured up to racing the thing on the sidewalk, while Max the bunny ran like crazy, sometimes with the truck, sometimes from the truck, always like the fire engines of hell were on his case. Erik had loved the bunny, too.


	7. Chapter 7

The paparazzi made an honest effort to blind him when they got out of the car. “Smile, darling,” Emma whispered into his ear, “I want the path cleared,” so Erik grinned, focussing on the nearest camera-wielding moron, who fumbled and shoved his whole body into the throng of people behind him, carving up a pathway.

Finally there was a section of the carpet which they could walk in peace, unhindered by a brain-dead slug with a camera, and Erik breathed, as the race to their seats – what was that movie even about, the posters were woefully uninformative: there was a dude with a bullseye-shaped shield looking grimy and depressed, the fuck was that even about – and he could almost see the a path through, all the way to the entrance. And then he saw Charles’ boyfriend, hanging onto some broad’s arm and pecking her cheek, in full view of every camera in New York.

He wasn’t even sure why the sight enraged him so but it took Emma digging her claws into his arm to get him to move past the legions carrying black boxes of doom. He was aware, on some level, of sighs of awe and her introducing “Erik Lehnsherr, the mastermind of _House of M_ ”, but not much past that. He might have answered a question, maybe. Or maybe not.

The point being, the moment they were through the actual door and the flash assault was left outside, Erik ditched Emma and only the common human decency stopped him from decking the goddamned bastard in his fucking American teeth when he saw him actually kiss the redhead on his arm. Never mind that he looked like he could bench-press Erik, soaking wet, and get up without having broken a sweat. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked, jabbing the corn-fed biceps.

“You,” Captain Nopants said darkly. “What is your problem?”

“My problem is that you are standing where every last fucker with a computer screen can see you, where Charles can see you, and you’re kissing some broad.”

“Oh, that’s rich coming from the man who shuts the door in Charles’ face for no goddamned reason. And that broad, as you charmingly put it, is my wife.”

“You slimy, two-timing arsehole.”

“Like you have room to talk, you heartless dick,” said the arsehole, getting into Erik’s face, to the tune of the broad’s scandalised “Steve!”

Somewhere to the left a flash went off far too close to his face, but Erik could hardly see anyway, so he just raised his hands and pushed, satisfied when Steve-the-bag-of-dicks stumbled backwards. 

“Alright, that’s enough.”

Erik chanced a look at the idiot who dared to touch his fabulous suit and was gobsmacked by the fact that there was Charles, right there, with one hand on his arm the other on Steve’s, pushing them apart. He looked fantastic with his hair slicked back and a fine black suit hugging him toe to collarbone. He would look better if he wasn’t glaring, but in the bright light his pupils had narrowed to tiny black pinpricks and the blue was nigh-overwhelming, considering the relative area it occupied.

Unfortunately, at that moment someone’s hand landed on Charles’ shoulder and he was pushed back so hard he stumbled and nearly hit Emma. Well, Erik was already going to tear the interfering bastard’s heart out, but then he noticed the camera and the greedy grin, and wow, that motherfucker was going down so hard his ancestors would feel it. He made a grab for the man’s throat and found that his firm grip on the collar made it a touch too tight, but that mystery cleared itself right up: Steve-the-scumbag had the exact same idea, and executed it in the exact same timeframe. It was good to know that Charles at least had some good ideas about men he shagged, not that it helped matters any. Erik and Steve exchanged long glances, weighing the other up and competing for the privilege of throwing the first punch, alas, despite the fact that the paparazzo was begging for it, it was not meant to be.

“That’s enough,” Charles said coldly and the paparazzo whimpered, a sound whose beauty could only be equalled by choirs of castrati angels. The man crumbled to his knees with his hand stretched out far behind his back and his wrist held between three of Charles’ fingers – frankly, Erik would have died a happy man if they could fuck right there, on the red carpet, with everyone and their mother watching, he was that turned on by the display. “Security!”

A guard ambled up their way, dumbstruck by the spectacle.

“I believe this gentleman is lost. Please escort him to the exit,” Charles said, twisting the wrist he was holding and liberating the pap from his camera with his other hand. He let go and the man staggered to his feet, glaring for all he was worth, and making grabby motions in the camera’s direction, but more guards were coming and Charles vanished from Erik’s view for a brief moment. When the crowd loosened he was still standing there, empty-handed, glaring at both Erik and the American arsehole. 

“What, pray tell, were you both thinking?” Charles asked.

“Well, I think Charles has it handled.” There was a woman behind Charles, round-faced and made up, wearing a shimmering, formfitting blue dress that looked entirely too familiar. Erik recalled staring at the dress until his eyes went puffy, because something about the sequins was just… off. Eventually he ordered most of them stripped, leaving just the shimmering fabric behind and a handful of blue sequins here and there, like scales creeping on skin. It might have been the presence of the dress that had Erik confused, as he had only seen the girl naked before. It was Raven, Charles’ sister. She was talking to the red-headed broad who arrived with Steve-the-waste-of-space. “Peggy, do you mind if I escort you to our seats?”

“By all means,” said Peggy, taking Raven’s elbow. “You are welcome to join us, once you’ve calmed down, dear,” she told her original date, who started to open his mouth, but both women were already walking away, faster than should be humanly possible in the heels they were both wearing.

Then it turned out that in the three seconds Erik’s attention was diverted Charles managed to give up on Steve and him both, and approached Emma, who should be tearing Erik down on the spot, but instead she was smirking like someone called and said there were bloody chunks of great panda on the menu. “Miss Frost, may I escort you to your seat?” Charles asked with a courteous bow that went out of fashion just as internal combustion engine was coming in.

“You may,” Emma said simply, gathering a fold of her dress and curling an arm around Charles’ elbow.

In the end Erik and the worst-person-in-history were left staring at each other in the crowded corridor, each wanting to tear the other’s heart through their throat with sporks.

“Look, I don’t know what happened here,” the cretin said, “but I’m sure it was a misunderstanding. I’m Steve Rogers. I know your name is Erik.”

… or maybe that was just Erik.

“Lehnsherr,” he muttered. 

“You have some nerve, coming up to me like this and insulting my wife.”

“You have some nerve making out with her in Charles’ presence!”

Rogers looked genuinely puzzled. “What does Charles have to do with it? And since when do you care, you went all out and broke his heart, and now you rise to defend his honour? A touch too late, wouldn’t you say?”

“What doesn’t Charles have to do with it?” Erik turned on the balls of his feet and glared at Rogers with all his might, cramming up a grin in there, too, for extra effect. “And does your wife know about him or do you keep that down low?”

“What? Of course Peggy knows Charles. Charles introduced us, for goodness’ sake.”

“What?” There was a whole dimension of the conversation that seemed to have passed him by. As it stood they were gathering a crowd of stars and starlets, half of whom were egging them on, while the other half swooned. “You’re trying to tell me that _Peggy_ knows you’re sleeping with Charles and doesn’t care?”

“I’m not sleeping with Charles, why would you think I was—Oh.” Rogers went red, actually red, like he was inserted into an overheated oven for a moment too long and then thrust, buck naked, into a crowd of his peers. “I was naked in his flat. I see. Yes.” Then the fucker coughed, like he was embarrassed.

Erik glared. He had no more words, so he glared. Seemed like a sane sort of plan.

“That’s just a colossal misunderstanding. I met Charles in college. We were friends – he introduced me to my wife! Last week I went round to take him out for drinks, but a group of paparazzi surprised me on the way there and I spilled a whole pink slushee on myself, that’s all. He offered a shower and closed door, but not enough towels. I swear.”

Erik glared. Erik opened his mouth to decry the lies and half-truths and injustice. Erik closed his mouth. “Uh – let’s maybe go in. The movie is about to start.”

He spent the whole séance sitting as far from Steve Rogers as humanly possible, considering they were seated side-by-side in the front of the theatre, right in the very centre of things, as their respective dates raised their respective eyebrows when they approached their respective seats (currently filled by a Xavier of either sex) and sent them away.

Then it turned out the ridiculous movie _starred_ Steve fucking Rogers, the man Erik was going to hate for the rest of his existence and possibly beyond, if the cosmos allowed.

*****

“ _Captain America_ was a ridiculous fucking movie, starring a ridiculous blond fucker doing stupid things, and I hated every second of it. Rogers is an arsehole of epic proportions, he should not be allowed out among civilised men,” Erik ranted to Magda over the phone. “What the actual fuck!”

“Erik – would you entertain the idea that you might be overreacting a little? What did that man ever do to you?”

“He starred in a stupid movie!”

“So did Christopher Lee, and I know for a fact you want to be him when you grow up.”

“My choice of role models is irrelevant.”

“For real, Erik, what the hell?” Magda asked. “And be quick about it, the babies want some form of attention and a chars. What the hell is a chars?”

There might have been an ancient curse written down on the altars of Cthulu, the uttering of which was only permitted at times of great distress to all mankind and its immediate cosmic neighbours; a word so vile that nuns would go mad just from hearing it and priests would spontaneously combust. Erik said that word right then.

“I love you too. What the hell is a chars?”

“They mean Charles.”

“Oh, your pretty new husband? Right, right. I forgot.”

“No, I mean Charles,” Erik said morosely.

“Haven’t you slept with him yet?”

“No. Yes. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

Erik winced, though she was in no position to see, and spilled the whole sad story of that night. Magda listened in silence, which persisted long after he finished talking.

“My god, Erik. You are a colossal fuck up,” she managed eventually. What galled was that she wasn’t even surprised. She just said it, like she would say “Erik, you like dick.”

“I know.”

“Wow. This is a standard to which I will hold all my future boyfriends, somewhat. As in, must not go that low, I mean. I’m sorry, why are you even talking to me right now?”

“I’m not sure?”

“Go and apologise, you fuckweasel!” Magda said and hung up. Erik stared at the phone for a good three minutes before he thought that it was a valid suggestion that he should take to heart and make good on.

With that in mind he got up, made himself a cup of tea, the good kind that he didn’t throw out in a fit of being angry at Charles for existing, waited until it cooled, then drank it. There were some cookies in a tin, so he ate those with the tea. He also found a bottle of whiskey, but in a sudden and unexpected bout of common sense he abstained. The conversation was already going to be awkward, showing up drunk wouldn’t help. Probably wouldn’t help, he thought, contemplating the shiny label. It could help a little. He was a little more verbose with alcohol in his system.

“How big a moron are you,” he said out loud, slamming the cupboard closed. Then, before he could lose his nerve, he walked out the door, crossed the hallway and knocked on Charles’ door. 

There was no answer, so he knocked again. He rang the doorbell once, then again, just in case Charles didn’t hear it the first time. Maybe he was in the toilet. That was hardly a cause to panic, plenty of people frequented toilets for extended periods of time. He was probably fine, just listening to the sound of shower, or the TV. Erik pressed his ear to the door and listened for any tune he might recognise, like the tell-tale “yeaaaaaah” signifying Horatio is about to stare down evidence until it yields the suspect’s photo and home address. There was nothing.

Oh god, maybe something happened to him. Maybe he slipped and fell in the bathtub, hit his head on the fixtures. Maybe he was lying on the fawn tiles, alone and unloved, bleeding out from a serious head wound. 

“Erik?”

… or maybe he nipped out to Sainsbury’s for some fruit and a cola.

“I was not panicking,” he said firmly, stepping away from the door and nonchalantly crossing his wrists behind his back, because his knuckles might have been a little raw.

“There are bloodstains on my door,” Charles said flatly. 

“That’s not true.”

“Right.” Charles opened the door and walked inside, going straight for the kitchen to unload the ice-cream he also brought. “Can I help you with anything?”

“I wanted to apologise. About Rogers. He is utterly ridiculous and I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You will be pleased to note that someone managed to sneak a cellphone into the theatre and there are photos of you and Steve watching his movie together on Tumblr. There is some debate on whether you are more Sterik or Lehngers, and Lehngers seems to be winning, but then there always is.”

“What the fuck is a Tumblr?” Erik asked, hoping to hell all this didn’t mean what he thought it did.

“Never mind. You were saying?”

“I thought you were sleeping with Rogers. It made me angry. I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“Huh,” Charles said. “But not about crawling into my bed while I was sleeping, because, Erik, that was so far from okay, science fiction is still trying to come up with a plausible way of getting there.”

“I know.”

“I was sleeping!”

“I know!”

“And then there was the kissing, which, honestly! I thought you were straight.”

Erik’s mind boggled in its entirety, from the lizard part to the bits which appreciated opera. “Wait, what? I make froofy clothes for a living!”

“Oh excuse me, for not assuming your sexual orientation from your perfectly respectable profession!” Charles glared in earnest. “The fuck, Erik? You have young children and an ex-wife you are perfectly cordial with, you eye my sister’s cleavage when she’s not naked, while asking me to babysit your children, and somehow I’m supposed to divine that you’re into me?”

There might have been some mixed signals, Erik allowed. “Your gaydar sucks. I’m sorry about that night. That wasn’t cool.”

“If by not cool you mean surface of the sun not cool, than yes.”

“Let’s not go overboard here, it’s not like I got around to touching—“ Erik trailed off, partly because he had the vivid vision of a shovel and digging himself through a tunnel and instead of coming up for sunshine finding only more and more of dinosaur bones, and partly because Charles was working up a glare worthy of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. “I’m sorry I did that! I was sleep deprived, I wasn’t thinking straight, I was angry at you, for making me read to the babies when I should be working. I’m sorry. I’m saner normally.”

“I’m not mad.” The great thing was that Charles didn’t sound mad, or even disappointed, which would have been ten times worse than mad. He sounded neutral, which was bad, in that neutral meant he could either fall into Erik’s arms or fall into Erik’s arms with a butcher’s knife in hand and Erik didn’t like the uncertainty. “I’d really like to know what you were thinking, though, because there’re exactly two things I contemplated telling you, and which will it be depends on what you say right now.”

Erik took a deep breath. “You smelled like my babies.”

“And that somehow makes my worst-case scenario ten times worse.”

“No! I mean to say, your flat smells like my babies. You have toys in your living room and their shampoo in your bathroom and the babies are dying to see you, right now. I was half-asleep. I walked in and I wanted to yell at you for no good reason, but then everything was peaches and baby powder and I just thought I was back home, falling into my bed, and that my bed had you in it, which made it so much better. I really wanted to sleep in that bed,” he finished bashfully, which in itself was a new experience. He blamed the completely mushy way Charles’ heroine dealt with the young scientist she rescued from the alien pod. “I mean, if you wanted to. I’d rather you were awake when I get there.”

Charles swallowed. “Well. That’s—That’s a lovely sentiment.”

“I’m aware, I’m still reeling.” That wasn’t the best of his quips, but it had done the job. Charles was smiling at his fruit bowl. Erik was trying not to dislocate his own wrists while simultaneously wringing them as hard as he could, because so many things he might have said could end up in disaster and in fact frequently did. 

Except Charles wasn’t saying anything. He put the soda in the fridge, then turned and walked away. He paused in the bedroom door. “Do you want to try the bed now, or not?” he asked, one hand on the handle.

Erik would feel shame for the rest of his life, because all he could say was, “but I’m not sleepy.”

“Oh, that’s fine, never mind then. I’ll just go and have sex all by myself; you will see yourself out, won’t you?”

Oh, Erik thought. “Oh,” Erik said. Then he switched his brain off and went to kiss Charles in the doorway leading to the bedroom, because the bed was very pleasant, but it was too damn far.

They had sex in the lazy afternoon hours when every ray of sunshine was a blinding gold colour, proud of the fact, and determined to show it off by worming under one’s eyelids. Normally Erik would have angrily shut the curtains, but that was a great colour combination on Charles, golden sun and blue sheets, and orgasms. Because orgasms were the colour of sunshine in the afternoon, azure blue and cherries.

“Don’t you have work to do?” They asked at the same time, sometimes after it turned out Charles kept wet wipes in the drawer by his bed and the sex was so bloody terrible Erik was going to insist they practice every day until they get it right. Because holy shit, sex was not supposed to be gold and shiny, bubbling warmth and kisses, not unless you are like, thirteen and dreaming of your classmate.

“I usually work in the evenings.” Charles slid into Erik’s dip of the bed and began stretching, so that various patches of skin were sticking to Erik’s at different times, and if it wasn’t for the fact he was drunk as fuck on endorphins and couldn’t get it up anymore if he tried, he would have initiated another round. “Don’t you have Fashion Week right about now?”

“It’s being handled,” Erik said, with his thoughts already circling around his mobile and however many angry messages Moira left on it while he was busy getting happy. “I hope it’s being handled.”

“Maybe you should go and check.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t kick me out right after we finally did it.”

“Maybe you should go and do your job and come right back.”

“Maybe you should call the babies, they’ve been asking about you.”

Charles got more glowy at the sentence, so much so that Erik thought about resenting him for a short while. “Really?”

“I knew it. You are just using me for my children.”

“Yes, there’s my master plan right there.” Charles didn’t have to lean far to kiss him, but he did, which led to a good half an hour lost on lazy making out in the sunbeam. “Go forth and make some fashion happen.”

“You are being utterly ridiculous.” 

“Dinner will be at eight, don’t be late.”

“That’s hours from now.” Erik crawled backwards towards the foot edge of the mattress at a glacial pace, not even caring that every word that came out of his mouth was a whole separate whine in itself. “The hell I’m going to do with that time?”

“Fetch wine, if you have nothing better to do, which you do. Out!” Charles said, the cruel bastard with no regards to human feelings (although in his defence he did move to the edge of the bed and offered a consolation in tonsil-hockey form).

Erik’s revenge was sweet and harsh, and prompt: Charles’ deadline turned out to fall precisely one month after Fashion Week ended (which was an enormous success, to the surprise of absolutely no one), with all that a writing deadline entailed. Erik took great pleasure in watching Charles run around wasting precious writing time by playing with the babies, but even greater when it was three a.m. and he could pry him from the computer, direct him to bed and fall back asleep, listening to Charles whine about the importance of editing chapters and heroines who fail to do as they’re told, to which Erik’s reply was invariably, “Wait until Wanda grows up, then talk to me.”

In short, Erik allowed Charles to drag him down from the heights of the fashion industry straight into middle age, where they potty trained their babies, watched more Disney than adult males ever should and argued about the superiority of Rarity (“she’s a fashion-obsessed diva, Erik, do you want your child to grow into a diva?”) over Twilight Sparkle (“come on, she’s bookworm cluster of paranoia, I don’t see how a cluster of paranoia is a good thing.”) in the mall come Christmas. Erik’s life was fantastic.

And Rarity was absolutely the best pony. 

THE END


End file.
